Today's 'Bombshell' Trump Probe News With December Roundup

 Editor’s Choice: December 2018 news and views

Dec. 7: Mueller Probe: ‘Bombshell’ Filing

MSNBC, Justice Department Filings on Manafort, Cohen Implicated Trump, Hosts Ari Melber, Chris Matthews and Ali Velshi, Dec. 7, 2018. Federal prosecutors filed three pre-sentence reports including two regarding Michael Cohen, former longtime personal attorney for Donald Trump. Experts said that one filing implicated President Trump by saying that Cohen helped pay hush money of two payments for more than $100,000 each before the 2016 election at the direction of “Individual 1.”

The pre-sentence filings included one against Cohen by New York federal prosecutors and two by by Special Counsel Robert Mueller III, one describing Cohen’s cooperation and another, heavily redacted, asserting that Trump’s former 2016 Campaign Manager Paul Manafort deserved strong prison time because his supposed cooperation was blighted by lying and unauthorized disclosures to the Trump defense team.

The gist is to bring forward new evidence against President Trump, the identity of “Individual 1.” Trump claimed in a Tweet that the day “totally cleared the president.”

One 38-page filing by New York federal prosecutors is a “bombshell,” according to U.S. Sen. Dick Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat now a member of the Judiciary Committee and a former U.S. attorney for Connecticut. Blumenthal said the New York filing on Cohen filing essentially names Trump as an unindicted co-conspiratory in payoffs via the National Enquirer to hide Trump’s adulteries to affect the 2016 election by hiding those facts from the public.

Federal Filing “Bombshell”: Former Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal (shown in a photo drawn from YouTube with President Trump), was one of two women, along with Stormy Daniels (shown at right), who have been widely reported as having had affairs with Donald Trump that were covered up in advance of the 2016 election.

Georgetown Law professor Neal Katyal, left, a former Obama Justice Department Solicitor GeneralKatyal said the filing against former Trump personal attorney Cohen asserted that authorities had evidence that Trump had directed Cohen to commit felony campaign finance violations apparently to hush pre-election claims that Trump had committed adultery with McDougal and Daniels a decade previous to the election.

“What we’re looking at today,” Katyal said, “is something that very seriously implicates the president in federal felonies.”

He noted also regarding the Cohen filing: “It’s not a filing by Mueller. It’s a filing by the Southern District of New York” [that is, by Trump-appointed leaders and career prosecutors in the U.S. Department of Justice].

Mueller Probe: Manafort

Washington Post, Mueller says Manafort told ‘discernible lies,’ including about contacts with employee alleged to have Russian intelligence ties, Rosalind S. Helderman, Dec. 7, 2018. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III told a judge Friday that Paul Manafort (now in pre-sentence detention as a flight risk and shown in a mug shot at left), President Trump’s former campaign chairman, told “multiple dis­cern­ible lies” during interviews with prosecutors, including about his contacts with an employee who is alleged to have ties to Russian intelligence.

The allegations came in a new court filing by the special counsel that pointed to some the questions prosecutors have been asking a key witness in their closely-held investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

Mueller’s prosecutors filed a portion of the document under seal and redacted other key points from view.

But they said that Manafort had told numerous lies in five different areas, including about his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, right, a Russian employee of Manafort’s political consulting firm who prosecutors have said has Russian intelligence ties. Manafort met twice during the campaign with Kilimnik.

Manafort was convicted of tax and bank fraud charges in Virginia in August. He pleaded guilty in September to additional charges, including conspiring to defraud the United States by hiding years of income and failing to disclose lobbying work for a pro-Russian political party and politician in Ukraine.

 Mueller Probe: Cohen

New York Times, Cohen, Trump’s Ex-Fixer, Should Get ‘Substantial’ Prison Term, Prosecutors Say, Benjamin Weiser, Maggie Haberman and Mark Mazzetti, Dec. 7, 2018. Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, should receive a sentence of roughly four years, federal prosecutors in New York said. Mr. Cohen has become one of the biggest threats to Mr. Trump’s presidency, providing material to both the special counsel and Manhattan prosecutors.

Michael Cohen, right, President Trump’s former lawyer, should receive a “substantial” prison term of roughly four years, despite his cooperation, federal prosecutors in New York said on Friday.

Mr. Cohen, 52, is to be sentenced in Manhattan next week for two separate guilty pleas: one for campaign finance violations and financial crimes charged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, and the other for lying to Congress in the Russia inquiry, filed by the Office of the Special Counsel in Washington.

Prosecutors in Manhattan said the crimes Mr. Cohen had committed “marked a pattern of deception that permeated his professional life,” and though he was seeking a reduced sentence for providing assistance to the government, he did not deserve much leniency.

“He was motivated to do so by personal greed, and repeatedly used his power and influence for deceptive ends,” the prosecutors said in a lengthy memo to the judge, William H. Pauley III.

At the same time, the special counsel’s office released its own sentencing recommendation to the judge for Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea for misleading Congress.

The special counsel seemed to offer a more positive view of Mr. Cohen’s cooperation with the Russia investigation, saying he “has gone to significant lengths to assist the special counsel’s investigation.”

Mr. Cohen has emerged as one of the biggest threats to Mr. Trump’s presidency, providing the special counsel’s office and prosecutors in Manhattan with material in dozens of hours of interviews. Robert S. Mueller III, left, the special counsel, has been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential ties to the Trump campaign.

Roll Call, Analysis: Why Trump’s Call for ‘Overwhelming Bipartisan’ Vote for Barr Seems Unlikely, John T. Bennett, Dec. 7, 2018. Wyden: Bush 41-era AG holds ‘anti-democratic’ view that president is ‘effectively royalty.’  President Trump and acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker on Friday gave a full-throated endorsement to the president’s pick to fill the post, former Attorney General William Barr, but Democratic senators and civil rights advocates are sounding alarms.

William Barr “deserves” from the Senate “overwhelming bipartisan support,” Trump said while addressing a law enforcement conference in Kansas City. “There’s no one more capable or qualified for this position,” he claimed.

Whitaker, right, while introducing Trump at the conference in Missouri, called Barr “highly qualified.” If confirmed by the Senate for a second tour, Barr “will continue to support the men and women in blue,” Whitaker said, adding: “I commend the president for this excellence choice.”

The former AG, however, has amassed writings and comments on executive power that could make for a bumpy confirmation process. For instance, he has written about the need for the executive branch to resist congressional attempts to obtain executive data.

In a July 1989 memo after he joined the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Barr urged the department’s officials to try to avoid lawmakers’ “attempts to gain access to sensitive executive branch information,” as well as hinder a chief executive’s ability to fire a subordinate, the New York Times reported.

“It is important that all of us be familiar with each of these forms of encroachment on the executive’s constitutional authority,” Barr wrote in that memo. “Only by consistently and forcefully resisting such congressional incursions can executive branch prerogatives be preserved.”

Barr also has sharply questioned several key fundamental aspects of the special counsel probe, and Trump used his morning “executive time” to fire off another remarkable Twitter attack on the Russia investigation.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (center) speaks with staff, including spokeswoman Heather Nauert, President Trump’s pick for UN ambassador, during a G-20 summit last week in Argentina. (State Department photo by Ron Przysucha / Public Domain via Flickr)

Roll Call, Three Takeaways as Trump Picks Former Fox Anchor for UN Envoy Post, John T. Bennett, Dec. 7, 2018. President makes clear he’s running foreign policy, wants salesperson in New York.

By selecting State Department spokeswoman and former Fox News anchor Heather Nauert as his next UN ambassador, President Donald Trump has further consolidated his control of America’s foreign policy.

“Heather Nauert will be nominated for the ambassador to the United Nations,” Trump told reporters on his way to Marine One on Friday.

Other than her 20-month run as the top spokesperson at Foggy Bottom, Nauert has no diplomatic experience. She spent her entire career before going to State at ABC News and Fox. The latter is Trump’s favorite cable news network, which helped her land the State Department job.

Palmer Report, News Commentary: Donald Trump has berserk meltdown after Rex Tillerson attacks him, Bill Palmer, Dec. 7, 2018. Rex Tillerson, right, will always be remembered as the Secretary of State who called Donald Trump a “f*cking moron” and then still managed to keep the job for several more months. Rex has been rather quiet since running away from the White House and wishing he’d never gone there in the first place.

But now, in an interesting bit of timing, he’s chosen today to publicly drop the hammer on his former boss – and now Trump is having a meltdown about it. Tillerson popped up at a fundraiser for the MD Anderson Cancer Center, a cause we can certainly get behind.

He ended up doing an interview with CBS News while he was there, and let’s just say that the interview didn’t go well – for Donald Trump, anyway. Rex explained that several times, he had to explain to Trump that the things he wanted to do were illegal.

When Rex would explain that the law would have to be changed if he wanted to do it, Trump would lose interest, presumably because that would be too much work. Suffice it to say that Trump isn’t pleased right now.Donald Trump posted this, ahem, interesting tweet in response: “Mike Pompeo is doing a great job, I am very proud of him. His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell. Now it is a whole new ballgame, great spirit at State!” Let’s be clear here: Trump is saying these horrible things about his own former handpicked Secretary of State.

But the big story here may be the timing. Even though Rex Tillerson attended the charity event, he didn’t have to sit down and do that kind of interview while he was there. He seems to be choosing right now to make sure everyone out there knows he’s every bit as not-cool with Donald Trump as ever, just as Special Counsel Robert Mueller is preparing to bring the hammer.

CNN, Exclusive: Mueller investigators questioned John Kelly in obstruction probe, Evan Perez and Dana Bash, Dec. 7, 2018. White House chief of staff John Kelly was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team in recent months, three people with knowledge of the matter told CNN.

Kelly responded to a narrow set of questions from special counsel investigators after White House lawyers initially objected to Mueller’s request to do the interview earlier this summer, the sources said. Kelly is widely expected to leave his position in the coming days and is no longer on speaking terms with President Donald Trump, CNN reported earlier Friday.

Kelly, right, is the latest high-ranking White House official known to provide information for Mueller’s investigation, though his interview marks a departure of sorts since Kelly didn’t join the White House until July 2017. Most of the dozens of other interviews have been with people who were associated with the Trump campaign, were part of the transition or served in the early part of the administration.

The Mueller questions to Kelly centered on a narrow set of issues in the investigation of potential obstruction of justice, chiefly Kelly’s recollection of an episode that took place after new reporting emerged about how the President had tried to fire Mueller. The President was angry at then-White House counsel Don McGahn about what had been reported by The New York Times. McGahn had refused to publicly deny the reporting. The special counsel wanted to try to corroborate McGahn’s version of events.

The White House counsel’s office had initially fought the Mueller request. One source familiar with the matter said that Emmett Flood wanted to make sure “ground rules” were negotiated.

“In order to question a government official about things that happened during the course of government business, you’ve got to show that it’s highly important and you can’t get it anywhere else,” the source said.

The source noted that the Kelly request came at a sensitive time, following raids of the home and office of Michael Cohen, the President’s now-former lawyer.The resistance to Kelly doing an interview represented a key turn by the President and his attorneys who had previously allowed the special counsel to interview current and former White House staff and handed over hundreds of thousands of documents.

The source noted that the Kelly request came at a sensitive time, following raids of the home and office of Michael Cohen, the President’s now-former lawyer.The resistance to Kelly doing an interview represented a key turn by the President and his attorneys who had previously allowed the special counsel to interview current and former White House staff and handed over hundreds of thousands of documents.

New York Times, John Kelly Expected to Leave White House Post in Next Few Days, Officials Say, Maggie Haberman, Dec. 7, 2018. John F. Kelly, right, the White House chief of staff, is likely to leave his post in the next few days, ending a tumultuous 16-month tenure still among the longest for a senior aide to President Trump, two people with direct knowledge of the developments said Friday.

Mr. Kelly and Mr. Trump have grown weary with each other. But Mr. Trump, according to several senior administration officials and people close to him, has so far been unable to bring himself to personally fire a retired four-star military general.

Still, both are said to be ready for Mr. Kelly to move on.

It is unclear who the replacement would be. Nick Ayers,left,  the vice president’s chief of staff, is seen as a leading candidate. He is supported by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the president’s son-in-law and daughter, who both serve as senior West Wing advisers and who, according to several officials, are trying to expand their influence internally and in the re-election campaign.

The White House senior staff meeting on Friday morning was canceled, according to three officials. But there is a holiday senior staff dinner scheduled for Friday night, and people said they expected Mr. Kelly to be there.

Trump Nominates Barr As AG

Roll Call, Analysis: Why Trump’s Call for ‘Overwhelming Bipartisan’ Vote for Barr Seems Unlikely, John T. Bennett, Dec. 7, 2018. Wyden: Bush 41-era AG holds ‘anti-democratic’ view that president is ‘effectively royalty.’  President Trump and acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker on Friday gave a full-throated endorsement to the president’s pick to fill the post, former Attorney General William Barr, but Democratic senators and civil rights advocates are sounding alarms.

William Barr “deserves” from the Senate “overwhelming bipartisan support,” Trump said while addressing a law enforcement conference in Kansas City. “There’s no one more capable or qualified for this position,” he claimed.

Whitaker, right, while introducing Trump at the conference in Missouri, called Barr “highly qualified.” If confirmed by the Senate for a second tour, Barr “will continue to support the men and women in blue,” Whitaker said, adding: “I commend the president for this excellence choice.”

The former AG, however, has amassed writings and comments on executive power that could make for a bumpy confirmation process. For instance, he has written about the need for the executive branch to resist congressional attempts to obtain executive data.

In a July 1989 memo after he joined the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Barr urged the department’s officials to try to avoid lawmakers’ “attempts to gain access to sensitive executive branch information,” as well as hinder a chief executive’s ability to fire a subordinate, the New York Times reported.

“It is important that all of us be familiar with each of these forms of encroachment on the executive’s constitutional authority,” Barr wrote in that memo. “Only by consistently and forcefully resisting such congressional incursions can executive branch prerogatives be preserved.”

Barr also has sharply questioned several key fundamental aspects of the special counsel probe, and Trump used his morning “executive time” to fire off another remarkable Twitter attack on the Russia investigation.

Washington Post, William Barr emerges as leading candidate for Trump’s attorney general, Devlin Barrett, Matt Zapotosky and Josh Dawsey​, Dec. 7, 2018 (print edition). Former attorney general William P. Barr is President Trump’s leading candidate to be nominated to lead the Justice Department — a choice that could be made in coming days as the agency presses forward with a probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to multiple people familiar with the deliberations.

Update: President Trump on Friday confirmed the nomination.

Barr, 68, a well-respected Republican lawyer who served as attorney general from 1991 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush, has emerged as a favorite candidate of a number of Trump administration officials, including senior lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office, these people said. Two people familiar with the discussions said the president has told advisers in recent days that he plans to nominate Barr (shown in an official photo from his 1990s term).

Even if Barr were announced as the president’s choice this week, it could take months for a confirmation vote, given the congressional schedule.

In the meantime, acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker would still serve as head of the Justice Department — a decision that has angered Democrats who question both his résumé and the legal justification for his ascension to that job, given that he was not serving in a Senate-confirmed position when Trump selected him as the temporary successor to Jeff Sessions, whom Trump forced out in early November after the midterm elections.

• Washington Post, The Fix: Barr has urged more Clinton investigations and backed Trump’s firing of James Comey.

New York Times, Trump Is Expected to Name State Department Spokeswoman to U.N. Post, Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, Dec. 7, 2018 (print edition). President Trump plans to nominate Heather Nauert, shown above, the chief State Department spokeswoman, to become his next ambassador to the United Nations as he moves to reshape his team for the final two years of his term, a person familiar with the choice said on Thursday.

Update: President Trump on Friday confirmed his nomination.

Ms. Nauert, a former Fox News anchor who has served as the public face of the State Department since last year, would replace Nikki R. Haley, who is stepping down as ambassador at the end of the year. If confirmed, it would make Ms. Nauert one of the most prominent promoters of Mr. Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.

Al.com, Who is William Barr? Trump names Attorney General pick to replace Jeff Sessions, Leada Gore, Dec. 7, 2018. President Donald Trump is nominating William Barr for U.S. Attorney General. “He was my first choice from day one, respected by Republicans and respected by Democrats,” Trump said. “He will be nominated for the U.S. attorney general and hopefully that process will go very quickly, and I think it will go very quickly.”

Trump described Barr as a “terrific man, a terrific person and one of the most respected jurists in the country.”

Barr served as AG from 1991 to 1993 under the late former President George H.W. Bush. If confirmed, Barr will replace Jeff Sessions, who resigned at Trump’s request last month. Sessions, a former Alabama Senator who was one of Trump’s earliest supporters, ran afoul of the president when Sessions recused himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Matthew Whitaker has been serving as acting attorney general after Sessions’ departure.

Barr also served as deputy attorney general from 1990 to 1991 and assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel from 1988 to 1989. He later returned to the private sector. A native of New York, Barr is a graduate of Columbia University. He earned his law degree from George Washington University Law School.

Trump also announced he would nominate current State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. If confirmed, Nauert would replace Nikki Haley, who announced in October she would be leaving the post at the end of the year. Nauert is a former Fox News Channel correspondent. She joined the State Department as spokesperson in 2017.

Washington Post, Trump expected to tap Army chief as next chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Greg Jaffe, Missy Ryan and Josh Dawsey​, Dec. 7, 2018. President Trump is expected to choose the head of the Army to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tapping a voluble and unconventional combat veteran to become America’s top military officer, individuals familiar with White House plans said on Friday.

In a move that reflects his penchant for showmanship, the president plans to announce his nomination of Gen. Mark Milley at Saturday’s annual Army-Navy football game, ending months of speculation about who will replace the current chairman, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who is due to step down next fall.

According to the individuals, who spoke on the condition anonymity to discuss a decision that has not been made public, Trump considered two senior officers, Milley and the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. David Goldfein, whom Defense Secretary Jim Mattis preferred.

Mueller Probe: Trump Rebuttal?

Washington Post, Trump promises a ‘major Counter Report’ to rebut Mueller’s findings, John Wagner and Devlin Barrett​, Dec. 7, 2018. In a string of angry tweets, the president took fresh aim at special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, right, and his team. It came hours before the expected filing of key court documents about former Trump associates Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort.

President Trump said Friday that his lawyers are preparing a “major Counter Report” in response to expected findings from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Trump confirmed the plan in a spate of angry morning tweets in which also took fresh aim at Mueller and his legal team, accusing them of conflicts of interest and overzealous prosecutions that have “wrongly destroyed people’s lives.”

“We will be doing a major Counter Report to the Mueller Report,” Trump said. “This should never again be allowed to happen to a future President of the United States!”

The president’s confirmation of the plan appears to have been spurred by reports that his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and others were doing little to prepare to rebut Mueller, who is also looking at whether Trump has obstructed justice.

George H.W. Bush In Perspective

Chief Justice William Rehnquist swears in President George H. W. Bush in 1989 as Barbara Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle (above her) look on.

WhoWhatWhy, Bush 41: The Triumph of Manners Over Truth, Jeff Schechtman, Dec. 7, 2018. Russ Baker looks into the telltale heart of George H.W. Bush and the real (and tragically under-investigated) legacy of the Bush family. While President Donald Trump has used truculence, bluster, populism, and manufactured division to hide the true nature of his agenda, George Herbert Walker Bush used manners, civility, and grace to hide the truth of his and his family’s agenda.

Both are very similar in their objectives. Both have enabled the continued transfer of wealth to the upper echelons of society. Both have sought to protect the interests of corporations and rich friends. But as we witnessed this week, Bush and the Bush family were far more effective with honey than with vinegar.

To wrap up this week of seemingly non-stop hagiographic coverage of George H.W. Bush, Jeff Schechtman talks with Russ Baker about the Bush family and Baker’s blockbuster book Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years.

Fatal U.S. Niger Raid Prompts Anger

Jeremiah Johnson, Bryan Black, Dustion Wright and La David Johnson (left to right), Special Forces personnel killed in Niger. Johnson was left behind for 48 hours.

Washington Post, McCain threatens to subpoena Trump aides on Niger attack that left 4 U.S. service members dead, Karoun Demirjian​, Oct. 19, 2017. The Senate’s top Republican on military matters is pushing the administration to brief key members of Congress on ongoing operations and accused the White House of not being upfront about the details of the ambush.

New York Times, Mattis Erupts Over Niger Inquiry and Army Revisits Who Is to Blame, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt, Dec. 7, 2018. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was livid over decisions taken following an investigation into a 2017 ambush in Niger that killed four Americans on a Green Beret team.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, right, was livid last month when he summoned top military officials to a video conference at the Pentagon to press them about an investigation into (an October) 2017 ambush in Niger that killed four Americans on a Green Beret team. His anger, Pentagon officials said, came from seeing news reports that junior officers were being reprimanded for the botched Niger mission while the officers directly above them were not.

Days later, a senior officer who had largely escaped punishment was told he would be reprimanded. Another senior officer’s actions before and around the time of the mission were also under new scrutiny.

And this week, Capt. Michael Perozeni, a more junior officer who had received much of the public blame for the mission received word from the Army: His reprimand was rescinded.

The turnaround is evidence of the troubled search for accountability in an incident that left a small team of underequipped and poorly supported American soldiers in the African scrub to be overrun by fighters loyal to the Islamic State. More than a year after the ambush — the American military’s largest loss of life in Africa since the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” debacle in Somalia — top military leaders continue to battle over how to apportion blame and who should be held accountable.

Punishments are in legal limbo, as are, apparently, commendations for bravery. An unredacted version of the investigation, promised in May, has yet to be delivered.

And unlike two naval collisions last year in the Pacific that led within weeks to the removal of the commander of the Navy’s largest operational battle force, no top generals have been ushered out the door in the Niger case — an example officials say that Mr. Mattis has been quick to point out.

Mr. Mattis wasn’t the only one angry, Defense Department officials said. Army officials complained to aides that Mr. Mattis and Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had contributed to the morass by allowing Africa Command, whose leader, Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, is also a Marine, to essentially investigate itself by appointing General Waldhauser’s own chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Roger L. Cloutier Jr., to conduct the inquiry.

The blowback from the video conference was almost immediate. Maj. Gen. Edwin J. Deedrick Jr., the officer in charge of administering internal punishments, was quickly told by Army leaders to re-examine some of the reprimands from the investigation.

Inside U.S. Politics: John Dingell

The Atlantic, I Served in Congress Longer Than Anyone. Here’s How to Fix It, John D. Dingell (Age 92, shown at right, represented Michigan in Congress for over 59 years). Dec. 4, 2018. Abolish the Senate. Publicly fund elections. (This article is an excerpt from “The Dean: The Best Seat in the House,” by John Dingell with David Bender.)

In my six decades in public service, I’ve seen many changes in our nation and its institutions. Yet the most profound change I’ve witnessed is also the saddest. It is the complete collapse in respect for virtually every institution of government and an unprecedented cynicism about the nobility of public service itself.

These are not just the grumblings of an angry old man lamenting the loss of “the good old days.” In December 1958, almost exactly three years after I entered the House of Representatives, the first American National Election Study, initiated by the University of Michigan, found that 73 percent of Americans trusted the federal government “to do the right thing almost always or most of the time.” As of December 2017, the same study, now conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, found that this number had plummeted to just 18 percent.

There are many reasons for this dramatic decline: the Vietnam War, Watergate, Ronald Reagan’s folksy but popular message that government was not here to help, the Iraq War, and worst of all by far, the Trumpist mind-set. These jackasses who see “deep state” conspiracies in every part of government are a minority of a minority, yet they are now the weakest link in the chain of more than three centuries of our American republic. Ben Franklin was right. The Founders gave us a precious but fragile gift. If we do not protect it with constant vigilance, we will most certainly lose it.

As an armchair activist, I now have the luxury of saying what I believe should happen, not what I think can get voted out of committee. I’m still a pragmatist; I know that profound societal change happens incrementally, over a long period of time. The civil-rights fights of the 1950s and ’60s, of which I am proud to have been a part, are a great example of overcoming setbacks and institutional racism. But 155 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and less than two years after our first African American president left office, racism still remains a part of our national life.

Just for a moment, however, let’s imagine the American system we might have if the better angels of our nature were to prevail.

Here, then, are some specific suggestions — and they are only just that, suggestions — for a framework that might help restore confidence and trust in our precious system of government:

An electoral system based on full participation. At age 18, you are automatically registered to vote. No photo ID, no residency tests, no impediments of any kind. Advances in technology can make this happen effortlessly. Yes, voting should be restricted only to American citizens. Strict protections against foreign meddling are also necessary.

The elimination of money in campaigns. Period. Elections, like military service — each is an example of duty, honor, and service to country — should be publicly funded. Can you imagine if we needed to rely on wealthy donors to fund the military? I know there are those who genuinely believe in privatizing everything. They are called profiteers.

The end of minority rule in our legislative and executive branches. The Great Compromise, as it was called when it was adopted by the Constitution’s Framers, required that all states, big and small, have two senators. The idea that Rhode Island needed two U.S. senators to protect itself from being bullied by Massachusetts emerged under a system that governed only 4 million Americans.

Today, in a nation of more than 325 million and 37 additional states, not only is that structure antiquated, it’s downright dangerous.

Trump War On Media

Washington Post, Trump called journalists ‘THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!’ A Capital Gazette photographer had a powerful rebuttal, Tim Elfrink, Dec. 7, 2018. Photographer Joshua McKerrow spent Thursday at the Maryland governor’s mansion, where he’s traveled annually for years to cover the holiday decorations with Capital Gazette reporter Wendi Winters. But this year, Winters was absent — one of the five victims killed in a mass shooting in the paper’s Annapolis newsroom in June. So McKerrow was already emotional when he saw President Trump’s latest all-caps broadside against journalists.

“FAKE NEWS – THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” Trump tweeted Thursday night amid a flurry of outbursts about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

McKerrow responded eloquently in a thread that is equal parts memorial to Winters and rebuttal of the president’s attacks on journalists at a time when global violence against reporters is spiking.

“Wendi was no ones enemy,” McKerrow wrote in a series retweeted more than 12,000 times as of early Friday.

Palmer Report, Analysis, CNN evacuated over bomb threat right after Donald Trump posts incendiary tweet, Bill Palmer, Dec. 7, 2018. Remember back when a guy in a Donald Trump van was sending bombs in the mail to everyone that Donald Trump was attacking during his Twitter meltdowns? That guy is now in jail where he belongs, but it turns out Trump – predictably – hasn’t learned anything from the experience.

As Donald Trump was having a rabid multi-tweet meltdown on Twitter tonight about various topics, he threw in this all-caps proclamation: “FAKE NEWS – THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” Just about half an hour later, CNN announced that it was evacuating its headquarters in the Time Warner building in New York City because someone had sent in a bomb threat.

Could this have been a coincidence? Sure, anything is possible. The last time Donald Trump started going off on CNN in such vicious fashion, one of his supporters tried to murder everyone at CNN. Trump’s tweet tonight was another de facto attack on CNN, and everyone knows it, because he directs these phrases at CNN the most often. When the President of the United States declares that CNN is the “THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE” and someone threatens to blow up CNN just minutes later, we have a real problem here.

Fox Shift On Trump?

Palmer Report, Analysis: Even Tucker Carlson now thinks Donald Trump is going down, Bill Palmer, Dec. 7, 2018. Yesterday we brought you the story of how Fox News pundit “Judge Andrew Napolitano” made the surprise pronouncement that he expects Donald Trump Jr to be indicted and arrested. As we pointed out, Fox News talking heads don’t tend to say things like this unless the company’s higher-ups have given them a new script. We were left wondering if other personalities on the network might also start laying the framework for Trump’s downfall.

Sure enough, here comes Fox News host Tucker Carlson joining the fray. He’s now announcing that Donald Trump is “not capable” of doing the job, and that he hasn’t delivered on his promises. That’s quite a change of direction for a guy who generally serves as a Trump cheerleader, while spinning phony conspiracy theories about Trump’s adversaries. Again, this kind of thing doesn’t tend to happen at a tightly scripted propaganda outlet like Fox, unless it comes from the top. So what gives?

It’s worth noting that Tucker Carlson made a point of making these harsh anti-Trump remarks while speaking in a venue other than Fox News. This comes after Napolitano made his prediction about Donald Trump Jr’s downfall during an interview that was also not on Fox News. It’s as if the network has instructed its propagandists to begin indirectly laying the groundwork for making a pivot against Trump, in order to soften up their audience for it before they start doing it live on Fox News.

Climate Change

New York Times, France’s ‘Yellow Vest’ Protests Have a Lesson on Climate Change, Alissa J. Rubin and Somini Sengupta, Dec. 7, 2018 (print edition). Scientists and economists believe that carbon taxes are needed to reduce fossil fuel dependence. The question is how to cushion the blow on the most vulnerable.

The so-called Yellow Vest protests against the tax increase have become the biggest obstacle yet to such attempts to encourage conservation and alternative energy use. The protests point to the difficulties facing nearly all industrialized countries committed to pulling the world back from the cliff’s edge of catastrophic climate change.

France’s cancellation of the tax increase this week in the aftermath of increasingly violent protests signaled the perils and political headwinds that governments worldwide may face as they try to wean their citizens from fossil fuels.

There is little doubt among scientists and economists — many of whom are in Poland for the current round of climate negotiations — that putting a price on carbon is essential in the effort to reduce fossil fuel dependence. The question is how to design a carbon tax, and how to cushion the blow for the most vulnerable.

U.S. Politics

New York Times, North Carolina Republican Owes $34,310 for Voting Operation, Records Show, Sydney Ember and Alan Blinder, Dec. 7, 2018. The campaign of Mark Harris, right, the G.O.P. nominee in a House race mired in voter fraud allegations, owes the money to a consulting group that used a controversial operative.

The operative has been accused of collecting absentee ballots from voters in a potentially illegal effort to tip the election toward Mr. Harris. The Democratic candidate is Dan McCready.

Global PoliticsWashington Post, German conservatives pick a Merkel ally to be party leader, signaling continuity and a long goodbye, Griff Witte and Luisa Beck, Dec. 7, 2018. The selection of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer delivered Chancellor Angela Merkel a badly needed victory that solidifies her legacy and gives her a shot at a gradual and graceful exit.

More On Mueller Probe

Newsweek, Trump Ally Roger Stone Says Mueller Probed His Sex Life: ‘What Does Any of That Have to Do With Russian Collusion?‘ Shane Croucher, Dec. 7, 2018. Roger Stone said being investigated by the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller was like undergoing a “legal proctological examination.” Stone, a political consultant and strategist and a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, was an adviser to the 2016 presidential campaign.

Because of Stone’s links to Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, which released emails stolen from the Democratic Party by Russian hackers, he is a focus of Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s election meddling and possible coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

The emails belonging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, were released shortly before the election. Stone denies coordinating with WikiLeaks and Assange on the emails, although the two men were in contact during the election campaign.

“Few Americans, I think, could withstand the kind of legal proctological examination that I have been under for the last two and a half years,” Stone told the American Priority Conference in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

Dec. 6

Trump-Saudi Hotel Payoff Scheme?

President Trump bonds with Saudi Arabian leaders in May 2017 with a ceremonial “Sword Dance” during the first overseas visit of his presidency.

Washington Post, Saudi-funded lobbyist paid for 500 rooms at Trump’s hotel in late 2016, David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell, Dec. 6, 2018 (print edition). U.S. veterans who stayed in the rooms were sometimes unaware of the Saudi government’s role in funding the lobbying trips. These bookings fueled a pair of federal lawsuits alleging the president violated the Constitution by taking improper payments from foreign governments.

Lobbyists representing the Saudi government reserved blocks of rooms at President Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel within a month of Trump’s election in 2016 — paying for an estimated 500 nights at the luxury hotel in just three months, according to organizers of the trips and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

At the time, these lobbyists were reserving large numbers of D.C.-area hotel rooms as part of an unorthodox campaign that offered U.S. military veterans a free trip to Washington — then sent them to Capitol Hill to lobby against a law the Saudis opposed, according to veterans and organizers.

At first, lobbyists for the Saudis put the veterans up in Northern Virginia. Then, in December 2016, they switched most of their business to the Trump International Hotel (shown while under reconstruction) in downtown Washington. In all, the lobbyists spent more than $270,000 to house six groups of visiting veterans at the Trump hotel, which Trump still owns.

Those bookings have fueled a pair of federal lawsuits alleging Trump violated the Constitution by taking improper payments from foreign governments.

During this period, records show, the average nightly rate at the hotel was $768. The lobbyists who ran the trips say they chose Trump’s hotel strictly because it offered a discount from that rate and had rooms available, not to curry favor with Trump.

Sex Trafficking

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Investigation: The laughable fraud called “Pizzagate” diverts from actual child trafficking tied to Trump, Wayne Madsen (investigative reporter, author and former Navy intelligence officer), Dec. 6, 2018 (subscription required). Trump and his cronies are involved in covering up an international sex trafficking ring involving underage girls and boys.

Assange Facing Expulsion?

London Express, Julian Assange: Ecuador president reveals ‘PATH’ for Wikileaks founder to leave embassy, Carly Read, Dec. 6, 2018. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been given a “path” by Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno to help him leave the South American Embassy in London where he has lived for six years under asylum. 

Mr Moreno said today that Mr Assange (shown in a photo by The Indicter human rights webzine, an advocate for his rights0 still faces jail time in Britain for violating bail terms when he sought sanctuary to avoid extradition to Sweden so authorities could quiz him as part of a sexual assault investigation.

The investigation was later dropped, but the UK Government said he will be arrested if he leaves the embassy. However, should he choose to leave, a “path” has been made available to him with conditions having been met, the leader said. He said: “There is a path for Mr. Assange to take the decision to exit into near freedom.” He also commented on the extraordinary length of time Mr Assange has been living in the embassy. Mr Moreno said: “I do not like the presence of Mr. Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy, but we have been respectful of his human rights and with that respect in mind we think that six years is too long for someone to remain nearly incarcerated in an embassy.”

Mr Assange has claimed that Ecuador is seeking to end his asylum and hand him over to the US, where prosecutors are preparing to pursue a criminal case against him after Wikileaks released thousands of classified military documents from the nation.

GOP Election Fraud?

Washington Post, The man at the center of fraud probe in North Carolina may have been doing this for eight years, Philip Bump, Dec. 6, 2018 (print edition). In 2010, a political operative named Leslie McCrae Dowless received a little over $7,100 to provide get-out-the-vote services for a candidate running in and around Bladen County, N.C. That candidate lost his race by about 6 points, though he won a majority of the mailed-in absentee votes.

That was thanks to Bladen County. Harold “Butch” Pope earned 52 percent of the mail-in absentee vote in his district. In Bladen, he won 81 percent of the absentee vote. Without the votes from Bladen, he would have lost the absentee vote by nearly 3-to-1.

Dowless is now at the center of questions about his role in a much more important contest — the race for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District in this year’s midterms. Over the past several days, Dowless has been identified as the manager of an alleged effort to collect absentee ballots from voters in Bladen that may then have been altered by people other than the voters themselves.

New York Times, North Carolina Republican Leader Says He’s Open to New Election in Disputed District, Alan Blinder, Dec. 6, 2018. The executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party said Thursday that a new election may be appropriate in the state’s Ninth Congressional District, where allegations of fraud have cast doubts on the fairness and accuracy of the vote count.

If the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement can state “there was a substantial likelihood that the race could have been altered, then we would not oppose a new election,” said the executive director, Dallas Woodhouse.

State investigators have issued subpoenas and begun sifting through thousands of pages of records to determine whether absentee-ballot fraud gave an advantage to Mark Harris, right, the Republican nominee in the Ninth District. Preliminary returns, which state officials have refused to certify, showed Mr. Harris with a 905-vote lead over his Democratic opponent, Dan McCready.

But the validity of Mr. Harris’s margin has been called into question in recent days as witnesses have repeatedly described a voter-turnout operation that appeared to rely on at least one seemingly illegal tactic: collecting absentee ballots directly from voters. The operation raised questions of whether ballots had been improperly marked for Mr. Harris or discarded if they were to be cast for Mr. McCready.

The elections board is expected to hold an evidentiary hearing on or before Dec. 21. Under state law, the panel, which includes four Democrats, four Republicans and one unaffiliated member, may order a new election if it finds that “irregularities or improprieties occurred to such an extent that they taint the results of the entire election and cast doubt on its fairness.”

Media / Privacy:

New York Times, Facebook Emails Show Its Real Mission: Making Money and Crushing Competition, Kevin Roose, Dec. 6, 2018 (print edition). British lawmakers on Wednesday gave a gift to every Facebook critic who has argued that the company, while branding itself as a do-gooder enterprise, has actually been acting much like any other profit-seeking behemoth.

That gift was 250 pages’ worth of internal emails, in which Facebook’s executives are shown discussing ways to undermine their competitors, obscure their collection of user data and — above all — ensure that their products kept growing.

The emails, which span 2012 to 2015, were originally sealed as evidence in a lawsuit brought against Facebook by Six4Three, an app developer. They were part of a cache of documents seized by a British parliamentary committee as part of a larger investigation into Facebook’s practices and released to the public on Wednesday.

It should not come as a surprise that Facebook — a giant, for-profit company whose early employees reportedly ended staff meetings by chanting “domination!” — would act in its own interests.

Global Tensions / Crime Claim

Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of the Chinese company Huawei Technologies.

New York Times, Huawei C.F.O. Is Arrested in Canada for Extradition to the U.S., Daisuke Wakabayashi and Alan Rappeport, Dec. 5, 2018. A top executive and daughter of the founder of the Chinese tech giant Huawei was arrested on Saturday in Canada at the request of the United States, in a move likely to escalate tensions between the two countries at a delicate moment.

The arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer, unfolded on the same night that President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China dined together in Buenos Aires and agreed to a 90-day trade truce. The two countries are set to begin tense negotiations in hopes of ending a trade war that has been pummeling both economies.

Those talks now face an even steeper challenge. The aim will be for the United States to ease its tariffs; in exchange, China will be expected to lower trade barriers and further open its markets to American businesses.

What’s more, Ms. Meng’s detention raises questions about the Trump administration’s overall China strategy. Beijing is now likely to pressure Canada to release her and to press the United States to avoid a trial.

Washington Post, Dow extends deep losses, triggered by uncertainty on U.S.-China trade deal, Taylor Telford, Heather Long and Thomas Heath​, Dec. 6, 2018. U.S. stocks suffered across-the-board declines in early trading as investors were rattled by the arrest of a Chinese executive, further threatening progress on a trade deal. Oil prices also plunged, and omens of a recession emerged in the bond market. China calls arrest of tech executive ‘despicable hooliganism.’

Ecuador To Oust Assange Soon?

London Express, Julian Assange: Ecuador president reveals ‘PATH’ for Wikileaks founder to leave embassy, Carly Read, Dec. 6, 2018. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been given a “path” by Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno to help him leave the South American Embassy in London where he has lived for six years under asylum. 

Mr Moreno said today that Mr Assange (shown in a photo by The Indicter human rights webzine, an advocate for his rights0 still faces jail time in Britain for violating bail terms when he sought sanctuary to avoid extradition to Sweden so authorities could quiz him as part of a sexual assault investigation.

The investigation was later dropped, but the UK Government said he will be arrested if he leaves the embassy. However, should he choose to leave, a “path” has been made available to him with conditions having been met, the leader said. He said: “There is a path for Mr. Assange to take the decision to exit into near freedom.” He also commented on the extraordinary length of time Mr Assange has been living in the embassy. Mr Moreno said: “I do not like the presence of Mr. Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy, but we have been respectful of his human rights and with that respect in mind we think that six years is too long for someone to remain nearly incarcerated in an embassy.”

Mr Assange has claimed that Ecuador is seeking to end his asylum and hand him over to the US, where prosecutors are preparing to pursue a criminal case against him after Wikileaks released thousands of classified military documents from the nation.

Texas Funeral For Bush

Washington Post, Bush’s pastor describes his faith, service at Texas memorial, Stephanie Kuzydym and Mark Berman, Dec. 6, 2018. The 41st president, shown in a 1989 photo, is being honored once more in Texas, the state he adopted as his own, during a memorial service at the Houston church where he and his late wife, Barbara, worshiped for half a century. He will be buried today at his presidential library in College Station, Tex.​Social Justice

New York Times, ‘I Want to Live Like a Human Being’: Where New York Fails Its Mentally Ill, Joaquin Sapien and Tom Jennings, Dec. 6, 2018. A cutting-edge program to help severely mentally ill people live on their own has endangered people who were not ready, a new investigation shows.

The stench from Abraham Clemente’s apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn, this summer was overwhelming. Maggot-infested scrambled eggs were strewn across the floor; a cantaloupe was so spoiled, it seemed to be melting. Feces were ground into the carpet.

Mr. Clemente, who is 69 and has schizophrenia, kept the shower and sink running for the “oxygen.” He blamed a kitchen fire on a doll nailed to a cabinet. He believed he could crush and smoke his antipsychotic medication to achieve its intended effect.

Yet the state of New York determined Mr. Clemente was capable of living on his own.

Media / Propaganda / War

SouthFront, DC Comics Got New Superhero From Douma. His Sister Was “Gassed” By “Russians’ Puppet” Assad, Staff report, Dec. 6, 2018. DC Comics, or the company that is behind all Batman and Superman comics and movies, as well as all other characters in their universe, took part in Washington’s Syrian propaganda narrative.

The twitter account “Stranf of the web of life,” published a crop of a page (shown above) that shows the origin story of Sandstorm, a Syrian superhero, who was part of the Global Guardians.

U.S. Politics

Huffington Post, Every President Recited The Apostles’ Creed Except Trump, And People Definitely Noticed, Ed Mazza, Dec. 6, 2018. Trump didn’t recite the profession of faith during the funeral for former President George H.W. Bush.

People on Twitter are calling out President Donald Trump for failing to recite the Apostles’ Creed at the funeral for former President George H. W. Bush on Wednesday. Footage from the event (shown above) shows much of the church, including the former presidents seated with Trump, standing to recite the profession of faith.

Trump and first lady Melania Trump stood, but did not recite the creed, which was written in the program, nor did they sing the hymns. Given Trump’s widespread support among evangelical Christians, that led to plenty of criticism on social media.

Roll Call, Democrats Complete California Sweep as Valadao Concedes Central Valley Race, Bridget Bowman, Dec. 6, 2018. TJ Cox unseats three-term congressman in 21st District by 862 votes. California Republican Rep. David Valadao has conceded his re-election race to Democratic businessman TJ Cox, with the final vote count showing Cox ahead by 862 votes in the Central Valley district.

Cox’s victory means Democrats have swept all seven GOP-held seats in California that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. Clinton won the 21st District by more than 15 points two years ago, while Valadao was winning re-election by 13 points.

Valadao’s concession comes one month after Election Day, and after The Associated Press had initially called the race for the three-term congressman. The AP later retracted its call after Cox moved into the lead as vote-counting continued into November. California allows mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day, which draws out the count in the Golden State.

New York Times, Elizabeth Warren Stands by DNA Test. But Around Her, Worries Abound, Astead W. Herndon, Dec. 6, 2018. The plan was straightforward: After years of being challenged by President Trump and others about a decades-old claim of Native American ancestry, Senator Elizabeth Warren, right, of Massachusetts would take a DNA test to prove her stated family origins in the Cherokee and Delaware tribes.

But nearly two months after Ms. Warren released the test results and drew hostile reactions from prominent tribal leaders, the lingering cloud over her likely presidential campaign has only darkened. Conservatives have continued to ridicule her.

More worrisome to supporters of Ms. Warren’s presidential ambitions, she has yet to allay criticism from grass-roots progressive groups, liberal political operatives and other potential 2020 allies who complain that she put too much emphasis on the controversial field of racial science — and, in doing so, played into Mr. Trump’s hands.

Inside Washington

Politico, Trump’s slow-motion staff ‘shakeup’ stunts 2019 planning, Eliana Johnson and Burgess Everett, Dec. 6, 2018. The president has left top officials in a state of limbo and top jobs without permanent occupants, creating ‘a sense of chaos.’ President Donald Trump is still looking for a new United Nations ambassador. He has no deputy national security adviser. His attorney general and Environmental Protection Agency administrator are serving in acting capacities, and his constant badmouthing of his chief of staff and secretary of Homeland Security has undermined their authority.

The president once openly signaled a plan to revamp his Cabinet and staff after the midterm elections, calling it a “very customary” act — and his aides acknowledged that big changes might be coming. But while he demanded the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions the day after last month’s midterm elections, the once-breathless anticipation of his next personnel move has stretched into a long and awkward waiting game.

Supreme Court

SCOTUSblog, Argument analysis: Majority appears ready to uphold “separate sovereigns” doctrine, Amy Howe, Dec. 6, 2018. When Terance Gamble was pulled over by police in Alabama three years ago for having a faulty headlight, he probably didn’t think that prosecutors would make a federal case out of it. And he certainly wouldn’t have imagined that his case would make national headlines – not so much for its own sake, but because of what a win for Gamble might mean for prosecutions arising from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Both of these things did happen, but after nearly 80 minutes of oral argument this morning, Gamble seemed unlikely to prevail on his argument that the federal charges against him violate the Constitution’s double jeopardy clause, which would in turn preserve the ability of state prosecutors to bring charges against defendants in the Mueller investigation even if they receive pardons from President Donald Trump for any federal charges brought against them.

More On Mueller Probe

Palmer Report, Analysis: Former U.S. intel official suggests Michael Flynn was wearing a wire, Bill Palmer, Dec. 6, 2018. Back when Michael Flynn’s plea deal was first announced a year ago, one of the stranger details in the cooperation document was that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was requiring Flynn (shown at right in a file photo) to agree to wear a wire if necessary. This made little sense; how could Flynn trick anyone in this manner, now that everyone knew he was cutting a plea deal? Now the language in his sentencing memo suggests that it may have in fact happened.

Robert Mueller’s sentencing memo stressed Michael Flynn’s willingness to cut a plea deal as soon Mueller approached him about it. Former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and pointed out this could be interpreted as Flynn having cut the deal long before it was announced. In such case, Flynn could have indeed worn a wire, or agreed to have his phone calls tapped, as he reached out to people on Team Trump, and sought to get them to incriminate themselves.

Three days after the Michael Flynn deal was announced on December 1st of 2017, Palmer Report pointed to a number of circumstantial clues that suggested Flynn might have been negotiating the deal back in late July of 2017. If that were the case but Flynn broke it off, and ultimately didn’t cut the deal until December, Mueller certainly wouldn’t be praising him now for agreeing to cooperate so quickly.

So what if Michael Flynn did cut a plea deal with Robert Mueller back in July of 2017, and they kept it a secret until they finally announced it in December of 2017, so Flynn could go play double agent? By that time, Flynn was already out of the White House. But as we keep seeing, Donald Trump has always treated Flynn with such kid gloves, it wouldn’t be surprising if Flynn called him in late 2017 and Trump picked up the phone. So yeah, maybe Figliuzzi is right, and Flynn was wearing a wire.

Dec. 5

Bush Funeral

Washington Post, Trump sits with fellow presidents but still stands alone, Philip Rucker, Dec. 5, 2018. The state funeral was orchestrated to be about one man and his milestones, but it was impossible to pay tribute to the 41st president without drawing implicit contrasts with the 45th.

Washington Post, George H.W. Bush / 1924–2018: Historian pays tribute to Bush during state funeral, John Wagner, Dec. 5, 2018. The 41st president’s son, former president George W. Bush, is among those scheduled to offer eulogies at the services at Washington National Cathedral. Also in attendance are President Trump and the three other living former presidents.

New York Times, George Bush’s Legacy: Revisiting Past Claims, Linda Qiu, Dec. 5, 2018 (print edition). After his defeat in the 1992 election, former President George Bush concluded that he lost his bid for a second term because he “just wasn’t a good enough communicator” and blamed the news media for the perception that he was out of touch with the average American. Certain claims are again abounding as the country prepares to bury Mr. Bush after his death on Friday. Here’s a look at some of them.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump can’t even do a funeral without screwing it up, Bill Palmer, Dec. 5, 2018. Earlier this year, the late Senator John McCain made it clear that he didn’t want Donald Trump at his funeral, and then further drove the point home by inviting former President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush to deliver the eulogies. Today, former President George H.W. Bush was laid to rest, and let’s just say that we were reminded why Trump doesn’t belong at these kinds of things.

George H.W. Bush hated Donald Trump, and certainly didn’t want to invite him to his funeral. He thought Trump was such a disaster, he famously crossed party lines to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. But President Bush was a protocol kind of guy, so he told his family to go ahead and invite Trump to the funeral anyway. Even though Trump seemed to be trying to behave himself, he still managed to make a mess of things just by being there.

Every former President and First Lady in attendance dutifully got out their book and recited The Apostles’ Creed when the time came. Then there was Donald Trump, sitting next to them, holding the book down by his waist, not looking at it, not bothering to participate in the memorial process, even as Melania stared at the floor in seeming embarrassment. Isn’t Trump supposed to be the evangelical candidate? It may have been a small moment, but it’s a reminder that this guy Trump either refuses to – or simply can’t – function in public.

Then there were the reminders that no one wanted him there, because he’s a psychopath and a racist and a career criminal who committed treason to rig the election in his favor, and is therefore not the President of the United States. We saw George W. Bush stop and shake hands with Trump, but then we realized he’d only reluctantly done it so he could get to the Obamas on the other side, and give Michelle a piece of candy.

Consortium News, Opinion: The Bushes’ ‘Death Squads,’ Robert Parry, Dec. 5, 2018. George H.W. Bush was laid to rest on Wednesday but some of his murderous policies lived on through his son’s administration and until this day, as Robert Parry reported on January 11, 2005 in How George W. Bush Learned From His Father.

By refusing to admit personal misjudgments on Iraq, George W. Bush instead is pushing the United States toward becoming what might be called a permanent “counter-terrorist” state, which uses torture, cross-border death squads and even collective punishments to defeat perceived enemies in Iraq and around the world.Since securing a second term, Bush has pressed ahead with this hard-line strategy, in part by removing dissidents inside his administration while retaining or promoting his protégés. Bush also has started prepping his younger brother Jeb as a possible successor in 2008, which could help extend George W.’s war policies while keeping any damaging secrets under the Bush family’s control.

As a centerpiece of this tougher strategy to pacify Iraq, Bush is contemplating the adoption of the brutal practices that were used to suppress leftist peasant uprisings in Central America in the 1980s. The Pentagon is “intensively debating” a new policy for Iraq called the “Salvador option,” Newsweek magazine reported on Jan. 9.

The strategy is named after the Reagan-Bush administration’s “still-secret strategy” of supporting El Salvador’s right-wing security forces, which operated clandestine “death squads” to eliminate both leftist guerrillas and their civilian sympathizers, Newsweek reported. “Many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success – despite the deaths of innocent civilians,” Newsweek wrote.

Saudi Murder

New York Times, C.I.A. Briefing Leaves Senators More Certain of Crown Prince’s Role in Khashoggi Case, Eric Schmitt and Nicholas Fandos, Dec. 5, 2018 (print edition). A bipartisan group of senior senators on Tuesday said that a classified briefing by the C.I.A. director had only solidified their belief that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, ordered the killing of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, right, an American resident and Washington Post columnist.

Prince Mohammed “is a wrecking ball,” Senator Lindsey Graham, below right, Republican of South Carolina, told reporters after an hourlong briefing by Gina Haspel, left, the C.I.A. director. “I think he’s complicit in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi to the highest level possible.”

Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama and the Appropriations Committee chairman, echoed that “all evidence points to that, that all this leads back to the crown prince.”

Senators, however, were divided as to what steps to take next, following a stinging vote last week to consider a measure cutting off American military aid to the Saudi-led war in Yemen. “Somebody should be punished, but the question is: How do you separate the Saudi crown prince from the nation itself?” Mr. Shelby said.

“There is not a smoking gun, there’s a smoking saw. You have to be willfully blind” not to see it, Mr. Graham said. He was referring to a bone saw that Turkish officials have said was used to dismember Mr. Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Washington Post, Turkey issues arrest warrants for aides of Saudi crown prince in connection with Khashoggi killing, Kareem Fahim, Dec. 5, 2018. Prosecutors accused the two aides of helping plan the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The men are believed to be in Saudi Arabia, and there is little chance the government will surrender them to Turkish authorities.

Mueller Probe

New York Times, Michael Flynn, Witness for the Prosecution, Editorial Board, Dec. 5, 2018. The special counsel says President Trump’s former national security adviser has provided “substantial assistance” and deserves a light sentence.

Michael Flynn, who served briefly as President Trump’s national security adviser, is Exhibit A in the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

If other players, such as Paul Manafort and George Papadopoulos, have worked only grudgingly with the special counsel, and some, like Roger Stone, are still holding out, we now know, thanks to a sentencing recommendation that the office filed late on Tuesday in federal court, that Mr. Flynn provided “substantial assistance” to federal investigators working to unravel the Russia mystery.

Palmer Report, Opinion: As Maria Butina nears plea deal, Donald Trump tries to get rid of her, Bill Palmer, Dec. 5, 2018. How close is alleged Russian spy Maria Butina (shown above0 to cutting a plea deal in the Trump-Russia scandal? Two weeks ago, she and federal prosecutors jointly asked the judge for two weeks to negotiate a deal – and tonight they and the judge set up a conference call about a deal for the morning. Such a deal would be bad news for Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, the NRA, and the GOP. Now suddenly Trump appears to be trying to get rid of Butina.

Rachel Maddow revealed on-air tonight that a “spy swap” is being discussed that would send Maria Butina back to Russia. But there is no way on earth that federal prosecutors would want to do this. She’s a star witness who wants to cooperate with U.S. prosecutors, and who can take down far bigger fish. In fact the only people in the U.S. government who would benefit from such a move are the specific people who could be taken down by Butina’s testimony.

In other words, Donald Trump and his loyalists are behind this proposed spy swap. They have to be. No one else would, or could, be. They’re trying to get rid of her before she can rat them out, by shipping her off to Russia.

Climate Change

New York Times, Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018, Kendra Pierre-Louis, Dec. 5, 2018. Worldwide, carbon emissions are expected to increase by 2.7 percent in 2018, according to studies published Wednesday by the Global Carbon Project.

U.S Politics

Washington Post, Wisconsin lawmakers vote to strip power from incoming Democratic governor, Isaac Stanley-Becker, Katie Zezima and Mark Berman, Dec. 5, 2018.  Democrats, who won all statewide seats in last month’s midterm elections, denounced the changes as a power grab.

Down With Tyranny! Opinion: Republicans Seek To Go Out With A Bang– Reaffirming Their War Against Women In The Lame Duck Session, Staff report, Dec. 5, 2018. House Republicans have always hated the Violence Against Women Act — first passed in 1994 — and yesterday Roll Call reported that they plan to use the cover of the lame duck session to let it lapse. “The law was set to expire Sept. 30, but it was extended through Dec. 7 under a stopgap spending bill that expires this week. Text of another short term spending deal was released Monday and does not include a VAWA extension, according to Republican aides in both the House and Senate.”

The law authorizes funding for social service agencies that aid victims affected by sexual violence, including rape crisis centers, shelters and legal-assistance programs. Reauthorizations over the years have included expanded provisions focused on reporting mechanisms for sexual violence on college campuses and extending protections for the LGBT community.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that one in three women and one in six men encounter sexual violence during their lifetime….House Democrats introduced a VAWA reauthorization proposal in July, sponsored by Texas’s Sheila Jackson Lee, that includes updates to the law such as provisions to help victims of domestic violence and stalking stay in stable housing situations and to bar evictions based on the actions of an abuser.

The update, backed by more than 160 Democrats and no Republicans, also includes a gun-related provision that could prove to be a poison pill for any action in the GOP-led House. The Democratic proposal would expand firearms laws to ensure that partners under protective orders or convicted of dating violence or stalking are prohibited from having a gun. Some states already have so-called red flag laws in place, with the aim of preventing escalation of violence.

Several dozen mainstream conservatives say they will vote with the Democrats to reauthorize the bill, but Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy are preventing a vote and are tossing some red meat to misogynistic Trumpists and religious fanatics in their conference who feel the GOP war against women works for them politically. Republican Brian Fitzpatrick (PA) is one of the GOP members who want to see VAWA extended: “Congress must continue to aggressively combat domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking by swiftly reauthorizing the bipartisan Violence Against Women Act.

Washington Post, Don’t condemn white nationalists, VA’s diversity chief was told after Charlottesville, Lisa Rein, Dec. 5, 2018. The tense exchange at the Department of Veterans Affairs occurred when President Trump blamed “many sides” for last year’s clash in Charlottesville without singling out white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Washington Post, ‘He didn’t seem angry’: Witnesses testify about James A. Fields’s demeanor during Charlottesville rally, Dec. 5, 2018.

U.S. Economy

A U.S. delegation, at right, led by President Trump meets a Chinese delegation led by President Xi Jinping at the G 20 Summit in Argentina this month.

New York Times, Trump Tries to Calm Trade Fears, Talking Up ‘Strong Signals’ from Xi, Alan Rappeport, Dec. 5, 2018. President Trump declared in a series of tweets that the Chinese government has sent “very strong signals” since Mr. Trump reached an accord with President Xi Jinping of China. Confusion about what Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi actually agreed to at their meeting roiled global markets.

Health / Charitable Giving

New York Times, How 2 New Yorkers Erased $1.5 Million in Medical Debt for Hundreds of Strangers, Sharon Otterman, Dec. 5, 2018. If a slim, yellow envelope with a Rye, N.Y., return address lands in your mailbox this holiday season, don’t throw it out. It’s not junk. Some 1,300 such envelopes have been sent to New Yorkers around the state, containing the good news that R.I.P. Medical Debt, a New York-based nonprofit organization, has purchased their medical debt — and forgiven it.

Last spring, Judith Jones and Carolyn Kenyon, both of Ithaca, N.Y., heard about R.I.P. Medical Debt, which purchases bundles of past-due medical bills and forgives them to help those in need. So the women decided to start a fund-raising campaign of their own to assist people with medical debt in New York.

Over the summer months, the women raised $12,500 and sent it to the debt-forgiveness charity, which then purchased a portfolio of $1.5 million of medical debts on their behalf, for about half a penny on the dollar.

Ms. Jones, 80, a retired chemist, and Ms. Kenyon, 70, a psychoanalyst, are members of the Finger Lakes chapter of the Campaign for New York Health, which supports universal health coverage through passage of the New York Health Act.

“The way sort of opened,” Ms. Jones said. They cast a wide net for donations, she said, explaining to people that the campaign was only a short-term fix for the larger problem of out-of-control medical costs.

Many people take on extra jobs or hours to afford health care, and 11 percent of Americans have turned to charity for relief from medical debts, according to a 2016 poll conducted by The Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Trump Watch: Media

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump finds a whole new way to screw himself, Bill Palmer, Dec. 5, 2018. After Donald Trump had a jarringly horrible day on Tuesday with the news that Michael Flynn had sold him out thoroughly enough to earn a free pass, Trump had the chance for a bit of reprieve today – if only because some of the headlines were going to be elsewhere. Trump did screw up President George H.W. Bush’s funeral, but only in a low key manner. Then Trump went home and screwed it up.

All that Donald Trump had to do tonight was stay out of the news cycle’s way. The Michael Flynn story was going to get whatever coverage it was going to get. But there was also the funeral story. And while Trump’s presence there clearly didn’t go well for him, the mainstream media was going to gloss over it, and simply report that – if nothing else – at least Trump got invited to one of these things for once. But Trump couldn’t simply keep quiet.

Tonight, Donald Trump posted an utterly ludicrous tweet declaring that his approval rating has somehow magically climbed to 50%, citing the infamous propaganda outlet Rasmussen. Not only was Trump posting a laugh-out-loud lie, he made the unbecoming move of bragging about his approval rating just hours after America buried a former president. Sure enough, now a portion of the news cycle will be dedicated to how Trump posted this idiotic fake-news tweet.

Sure, it’s a small thing. But it’s a sign that Donald Trump still doesn’t get it. Even now that everything has closed in on him, and he’s about to go down for treason, he’s still more focused on trying to convince himself he’s beloved than he is on trying to find a way to save himself.

More Facebook Revelations

Washington Post, Facebook allegedly offered advertisers special access to users’ data, Craig Timberg, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Tony Romm​, Dec. 5, 2018. A key British lawmaker alleged that the social media giant maintained “whitelisting agreements” that gave select companies preferential access to valuable user data.

Dec. 4

Mueller On Flynn Sentence

Washington Post, Mueller seeks no prison time for former national security adviser Michael Flynn, citing his ‘substantial assistance,’ Carol D. Leonnig, Rosalind S. Helderman and Devlin Barrett, Dec. 4, 2018. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on Tuesday recommended that former national security adviser Michael Flynn serve no prison time, citing his “substantial assistance” with several ongoing investigations, according to a new court filing.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on Tuesday recommended that former national security adviser Michael Flynn, right, serve no prison time, citing his “substantial assistance” with several ongoing investigations, according to a new court filing.

Flynn was forced out of his post as national security adviser in February 2017 after the White House said he misled administration officials, including Vice President Pence, about his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the United States at the time.

Since then, Flynn has been cooperating with Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and his full account of events has been one of the best-kept secrets in Washington. He is one of five Trump aides who have pleaded guilty in the special counsel probe.

Down With Tyranny! Manafort Revelations Show Trump Team Crime, Legacy Of Injustice, Andrew Kreig, Dec. 4, 2018. Among the remarkable Mueller probe revelations last week was the claim that attorneys for former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort have been sharing confidential information about the special counsel’s investigation with the legal team of “Individual 1,” aka President Trump.

The New York Times broke the main story electronically on Nov. 27 under the headline, Manafort’s Lawyer Is Said to Have Briefed Trump Team on Mueller Talks. Reporters Michael S. Schmidt, Sharon LaFraniere and Maggie Haberman wrote.

the controversy illustrates continuing tension between the federal enforcement “community” and the opportunists (or worse) who operate within the justice system or on its fringes. Such conflicts are especially important and outrageous as the Trump administration draws upon some of the very worst Bush administration attorneys.

Among the many such shocking situations, this column focuses on three such officials who have become extremely prominent and otherwise newsworthy, in part because of their ties to President Trump and his team.

• Manafort’s lead defense attorney, Kevin Downing, is a former senior litigator within the Justice Department’s tax fraud section, which missed a series of colossal tax frauds, including by Downing’s future client Manafort. Downing reportedly is also one of the attorneys involved in the liaison with the Trump White House that the New York Times reported last week;

• U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta as U.S. attorney for Miami in the Bush administration was involved both in major tax fraud cover-ups and also in whitewashing the federal-state prosecution of billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein is a Trump friend and neighbor who is back in the news this week with the beginning of a major defamation trial in West Palm Beach, Florida; and

• Our third Bush-era former Justice Department official is Matthew Whitaker, whom Trump named as acting attorney general after Whitaker tried out for the job by arguing on cable news shows that Mueller’s investigation are excessive and unwarranted. Whitaker’s career includes a stint as a Bush-appointed U.S. attorney for Northern Iowa, where he vigorously prosecuted one of his political enemies whom a jury acquitted in just two hours.

Global Trade

Washington Post, Uncertainty surrounds trade deals with China, Canada and Mexico, Damian Paletta and Erica Werner, Dec. 4, 2018. Beijing’s promises remained vague, while a fragile North America pact got a rough reception in Congress. U.S. stock markets closed down nearly three percent on the day.

Trump Finances

Associated Press, 2 attorneys general to subpoena Trump Organization, IRS, Tami Abdolla, Dec. 4, 2018. The attorneys general of the District of Columbia and Maryland plan to file subpoenas Tuesday seeking records from the Trump Organization, the Internal Revenue Service and dozens of other entities as part of a lawsuit accusing Donald Trump of profiting off the presidency.

The flurry of subpoenas came a day after U.S. District Court Judge Peter J. Messitte approved a brisk schedule for discovery in the case alleging that foreign and domestic government spending at Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel amounts to gifts to the president in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.

The subpoenas target more than 30 Trump-linked private entities and the federal agency that oversees the lease for Trump’s D.C. hotel. Subpoenas were also being sent to the Department of Defense, General Services Administration, Department of Commerce, Department of Agriculture and the IRS, all of which have spent taxpayer dollars at the hotel.

Because Trump was also the first president in modern history to not release his tax returns, any responsive records would likely provide the first clear picture of the finances of Trump’s business empire as well as his Washington, D.C., hotel.

There is no indication yet that Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and District of Columbia Attorney General Karl A. Racine, both Democrats, would push for the president’s tax returns, at least in this initial round of legal discovery, given the sensitive nature of such a request and likely additional delays it would cause. But tax returns for some of Trump’s business entities, including the state and federal tax returns for the Trump Organization, are also being requested.

Saudi Murder Plot

Washington Post, CIA director briefs senators on Saudi role in Khashoggi killing, Shane Harris and Karoun Demirjian​, Dec. 4, 2018. Gina Haspel had faced mounting pressure to explain the agency’s findings that the Saudi crown prince likely ordered the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, right.

ABCNews, After CIA briefing, Republicans say ‘no question’ Saudi crown prince ordered Khashoggi murder, Mariam Khan, Conor Finnegan and Trish Turner, Dec. 4, 2018. Following a briefing by CIA director Gina Haspel Tuesday on the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, leading Republican senators told reporters that there was “zero question” that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the brutal murder.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican (shown in a file photo), said “I have zero question in my mind that the Crown Prince MBS ordered the killing, monitored the killing, knew exactly what was happening. Planned it in advance. If he was in front of a jury he would be convicted in 30 minutes. Guilty,” Corker said.

Corker called the Trump administration’s claim that there is no direct evidence of the crown prince’s involvement “unacceptable.”

Election Rigging

Washington Post, N.C. election-fraud investigation centers on operative who worked for GOP candidate, Amy Gardner and Kirk Ross, Dec. 4, 2018 (print edition).  The state elections board, which subpoenaed Republican Mark Harris’s campaign, has collected information suggesting that high-level officials may have been aware of the activities, according to people familiar with the probe.

Washington Post, House Democrats could refuse to seat N.C. Republican amid election-fraud probe, Hoyer says, Mike DeBonis​, Dec. 4, 2018. Incoming House majority leader Steny H. Hoyer’s statement comes as N.C. election officials investigate whether an operative hired by Republican Mark Harris illegally collected incomplete ballots from voters.

Mueller Probe

Washington Post, Analysis: Trump’s latest tweets on Mueller probe cross clear lines, experts say, Deanna Paul, Dec. 4, 2018 (print edition). Attorney George Conway (shown at right), husband of White House counsel Kellyanne Conway, and others suggest that the tweets on Michael Cohen and Roger Stone might be obstruction.

President Trump took to Twitter Monday morning, haranguing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and witnesses to his ongoing Russia investigation. His tweets have become a common morning occurrence, particularly in recent weeks. But legal experts are calling Monday’s missives a newsworthy development that amounts to evidence of obstructing justice.

Trump’s first statement went out after Michael Cohen, left, his former personal attorney who pleaded guilty last week for lying to Congress about the president’s real estate project in Russia. In his tweet, Trump alleged that Cohen lied to Mueller and called for a severe penalty, demanding that his former fixer “serve a full and complete sentence.”

After the overt attack on Cohen came a tweet encouraging Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to Trump, not to become a witness against him.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Here’s the thing about the Michael Flynn sentencing, Bill Palmer, Dec. 4, 2018. At some unknown time today, Special Counsel Robert Mueller will release a sentencing memo – to the judge and to the public – in which he’ll make his recommendation about how long Michael Flynn should spend in prison. Based on the anticipation this morning on social media, I can tell that some of you are about to be very disappointed in how long Flynn’s recommended sentence is going to be.

Almost exactly a year ago, Robert Mueller allowed Michael Flynn to plead guilty to a single charge of lying to the FBI, in exchange for Flynn providing all the testimony and evidence he could against bigger fish like Donald Trump. This particular criminal charge comes with a sentencing guideline of just six months in prison. If Flynn has been particularly helpful, Mueller could recommend even less than that.

This is simply how cooperating plea deals work. Michael Flynn didn’t want to sell out Donald Trump and everyone else involved. He reluctantly did it so that he could avoid a long prison sentence, and so that his son Michael Flynn Jr could avoid prison altogether. There are two reasons Robert Mueller gave Flynn such an “easy” deal. One was that Flynn was the first big name to flip. The other was that Mueller must have known that Flynn was sitting on really useful testimony and evidence against Trump. Because this is, entirely, about taking down Donald Trump.

So when the news today ends up being that Michael Flynn only got something like six months, and that he only pleaded guilty to lying, Donald Trump’s base will mistakenly celebrate it. They’ll say “See, there was no collusion, and this investigation was a waste of time. $40 million to put a guy in prison for a few months.”

But that’s because they’re clueless and delusional. Flynn only got the more serious charges dropped because he sold out Trump. The only way today could represent good news for Trump would be if Mueller announced that Flynn was going to prison for a very long time, because that would mean that Flynn never did properly give Trump up. Trump’s worst nightmare today is that Flynn gets a really lenient sentence, because that means Flynn buried Trump.

Epstein Settles Sex Claim 

Palm Beach Post, Settlement reached in Epstein case; Frankel urges probe of Acosta, Jane Musgrave, Dec. 4, 2018. Moments before jury selection was to begin in what promised to be a salacious trial plumbing the misdeeds of billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, both sides announced a settlement had been reached, negating the need for the much-anticipated three-week trial.

While the terms of the monetary settlement were confidential, as part of the accord, Epstein apologized for filing a lawsuit against attorney Bradley Edwards. In the lawsuit, Epstein accused the Fort Lauderdale lawyer of trumping up allegations that he had sexually assaulted young women at his Palm Beach mansion.

Epstein paid $5.5 million to settle the claims against three of the young women Edwards represented and eventually dropped the suit against Edwards. But, Edwards turned the tables on Epstein, filing a malicious prosecution lawsuit against the 65-year-old wildly successful money manager. That was the lawsuit that was to be decided by a Palm Beach County Circuit Court jury.

In the apology that was read aloud in court, Epstein admitted he sued Edwards because the lawsuits the attorney filed on behalf of the young women were “troublesome for me.”

“The lawsuit I filed was my unreasonable attempt to damage his business reputation and cause Mr. Edwards to stop pursuing cases against me,” attorney Scott Link said on behalf of Epstein, who was not in the courtroom. “It did not work.”

Epstein, who spends most of his time on his private island in the Virgin Islands or at his New York penthouse apartment, said what he did was wrong.

But Edwards and his attorney, Jack Scarola, said the saga that began in 2009 is far from over. Edwards said he will continue to pursue a lawsuit now pending in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, accusing federal prosecutors of violating the federal Crime Victims Rights Act by signing off on agreement that allowed Epstein to escape federal prosecution.

The so-called non-prosecution agreement allowed Epstein to plead guilty to two state charges — procuring a minor for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution. Epstein served 13 months of an 18-month sentence in a vacant wing of the county stockade — a cell he was allowed to leave during the day so he could continue to work.

#MeToo: Ohio State Football

New York Times, For Urban Meyer and Ohio State, a Parting Months in the Making, Marc Tracy, Dec. 4, 2018. From the moment the university suspended the coach, shown at right, in August for three games, a special relationship was irrevocably severed.

Media / Mueller News

Washington Post, The Guardian offered a bombshell about Paul Manafort. It still hasn’t detonated, Paul Farhi​​, Dec. 4, 2018. The Guardian newspaper reported last week that Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign manager, had met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange several times, including during a critical period in March 2016.

The story suggested that the meeting in London could be a key link in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of the Trump campaign. If such a meeting occurred, it would establish the first direct contact between one of the president’s associates and WikiLeaks, which began releasing emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee in summer 2016. The emails, stolen by Russian agents and passed to WikiLeaks, proved damaging to Trump’s opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Manafort and WikiLeaks have blasted the Guardian’s reporting. Manafort — who was convicted in August on eight counts of bank- and tax-fraud charges arising from his decades-long business and political activities in Ukraine — has called the article “totally false and deliberately libelous.” He said in a statement last week that he’s never met Assange.

French Fuel Tax Protest

Washington Post, France suspends fuel tax plan that sparked violent protests, James McAuley, Dec. 4, 2018. “No tax is worth putting in danger the unity of the nation,” said Prime Minister Édouard Philippe. The move represented a major reversal for the government of President Emmanuel Macron, right, who is slipping in polls.

French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced Tuesday that the French government will temporarily suspend the carbon tax plan that triggered weeks of often violent protests nationwide.

To help curb climate change, the government had proposed the taxes, which were slated to take effect in January and were designed to wean consumers off diesel and other polluting fuels and to favor electric cars. But the price increases those taxes represented led to social unrest unseen in recent years that quickly became a full-blown crisis, and President Emmanuel Macron became the latest world leader to suffer at home for imposing green taxes.

Earlier story: Protests damage Paris monuments, shops and Macron’s presidency, James McAuley, Dec. 4, 2018. .

Teen Abuse Defamation Trial

Washington Post, Palm Beach trial could reveal details of billionaire’s alleged abuse of teen girls, Marc Fisher, Dec. 4, 2018 (print edition). Jeffrey Epstein’s lawsuit pushes back against a lawyer who represented his accusers, but it may offer a window into a sordid saga of sexual exploitation.

Update: Opposing sides reached a financial settlement on undisclosed terms, aborting the trial.

U.S. Politics

New York Times, Wisconsin Legislature Live Updates: A Fight for Political Power, Mitch Smith and Monica Davey, Dec. 4, 2018. After losing top state offices, Republican lawmakers are racing to pass legislation that would diminish the power of the incoming Democratic governor. Angry Democrats were gathering at the State Capitol for a tense showdown and a second day of protesting what they deemed an unethical power grab.

New York Times, Opinion: Wisconsin Is About to Make a Huge Mistake, Dan Kaufman, Dec. 4, 2018 (print edition). The lame duck, heavily gerrymandered Republican Legislature plans to vote on Tuesday to limit the powers of the incoming governor and attorney general, who are — surprise — Democrats.o grew up in Wisconsin.

Late Friday afternoon, less than a month after a Democrat, Tony Evers, defeated Scott Walker, the incumbent Republican governor, Robin Vos, the Republican Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, followed through on his threat to strip the new governor of some of his power.

That day, an assembly committee released five bills that grant sweeping new authority to the Legislature at the expense of both Mr. Evers and Wisconsin’s new attorney general, Josh Kaul, who also happens to be a Democrat. Drafted in secret, the legislation was rushed to the Joint Finance Committee on Monday for its only public hearing. Legislators and outraged citizens scrambled all weekend to parse more than forty serious changes to state law embedded in the 141 pages of text. The legislature is expected to vote on the bills on Tuesday and Mr. Walker has indicated an openness to signing legislation of this stripe.

No one is really bothering to hide the purpose of this lame duck legislation: to continue the Republicans’ hold on state government, even at the expense of core democratic principles like respect for the separation of powers and majority rule. The legislation would nullify the decision-making of Wisconsin’s voters, who rejected Republicans for every statewide office in the November midterms.

Washington Post, Republican National Congressional Committee says it was hacked during this year’s election cycle, Staff report, Dec. 4, 2018. It wasn’t known if a foreign government was behind the cyberattack against the campaign organization for House Republicans, which discovered the breach in April, a person familiar with the case said.

But the intruder was “sophisticated, based on their tactics and methods” and the intrusion “was clearly designed to hide the tracks of who it was,” this person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the intrusion is under investigation.

Daily Beast, How No Labels Went From Preaching Unity to Practicing the Dark Arts, Sam Stein and Lachlan Markay, Dec. 4, 2018. Internal documents show a group funded by the biggest names in finance. But also beset by dysfunction and division. As House Republicans were crafting their Obamacare repeal bill in the spring of 2017, Nancy Jacobson, the founder and CEO of No Labels, a group that promotes bipartisan governance, wanted to spice up her organization’s Twitter feed.

So she turned to someone known for provocative political takes: her husband, longtime political operative Mark Penn. In a tweet that March, written under Penn’s direction, No Labels took the unconventional position that Democrats were to blame for not being more willing to work with Republicans in the destruction of their party’s signature piece of modern legislation.

The blowback was harsh both inside and outside the organization, so much so that the tweet was subsequently deleted and Penn was taken off the handle. Asked about this episode this past week, Melanie Sloan, a spokesperson for No Labels, initially said that Penn had never been given effective control of the group’s account. But Jacobson later confirmed it.

A group created with the goal of promoting political consensus and compromise has increasingly veered into explicit and occasionally heated political combat. And it’s not just by handing over its Twitter handle to one of Washington, D.C.’s most notorious operatives.

The group, which was founded as a champion of political bipartisanship, has been quietly courting donations from some of the most notoriously partisan money men and women in politics.

By the end of the 2018 cycle, six No Labels-affiliated super PACs—No Labels Action, Forward Not Back, United Together, Govern or Go Home, Citizens for a Strong America, and United for Progress—had collectively raised more than $11 million from 53 individual donors. The average contribution to the groups was about $124,000, illustrating their reliance on high-dollar donors rather than grassroots financial support.

More On Mueller Probe

New York Times, Manafort Discussed Deal With Ecuador to Hand Assange Over to U.S., Kenneth P. Vogel and Nicholas Casey, Dec. 4, 2018 (print edition). Talks between Paul Manafort and President Lenín Moreno of Ecuador on the fate of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ultimately ended without any deals.

#MeToo Scandal  / Labor Issues

New York Times, Opinion: Why Does Alex Acosta Still Have a Job? Michelle Goldberg, Dec. 4, 2018 (print edition). The cabinet official’s connection to a shady deal for an alleged child molester. It is the perverse good fortune of Alexander Acosta, left, Donald Trump’s secretary of labor, to be part of an administration so spectacularly corrupt that it’s simply impossible to give all its scandals the attention they deserve.

Last Wednesday, The Miami Herald published a blockbuster multipart exposé about how the justice system failed the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, a rich, politically connected financier who appears to have abused underage girls on a near-industrial scale. The investigation, more than a year in the making, described Epstein as running a sort of child molestation pyramid scheme, in which girls — some in middle school — would be recruited to give Epstein “massages” at his Palm Beach mansion, pressured into sex acts, then coerced into bringing him yet more girls. The Herald reported that Epstein was also suspected of trafficking girls from overseas.

What’s shocking is not just the lurid details and human devastation of his alleged crimes, but the way he was able to use his money to escape serious consequences, thanks in part to Acosta, then Miami’s top federal prosecutor. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Acosta took extraordinary measures to let Epstein — and, crucially, other unnamed people — off the hook.

The labor secretary, whose purview includes combating human trafficking, has done nothing so far to rebut The Herald’s reporting. (A spokesman for his department has referred reporters to his previous statements about the case.) It should end his career. The story might have been overshadowed by last week’s cascading revelations in the Trump-Russia scandal, or the news that acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker knew of numerous fraud complaints against a company he advised, to take just two examples of administration lawlessness. But while Acosta’s record covering up for a depraved plutocrat makes him a good fit for the Trump administration, it should disqualify him from public service.

Bush Death / Media News

New York Times, Opinion: George Bush and the Obituary Wars, Frank Bruni, Dec. 4, 2018. We like our villains without redemption and our heroes without blemish. What happened to shades of gray?

CIA Director George H.W. Bush hears a briefing in 1976 on June 17 following the assassination of two Americans in Lebanon (David Kennerly photo now with the National Archives)

Truthout, Opinion: George H.W. Bush Empowered Atrocity Abroad and Fascists at Home, William Rivers Pitt, Dec. 4, 2018. The television spent the entire weekend reminding me that George Herbert Walker Bush loved his country, his wife, his children, his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren, his dog, the city of Houston, the town of Kennebunkport, baseball, football, golf and so very much else besides.

Our 41st US president, the talking heads assured me, was a veritable ocean of love. The newspaper folks did their part to paint this picture, as well; stealing a leaf from Jesus of Nazareth over the weekend, Bush Sr. died and rose again on the warm updraft of early 1990s B-roll footage and gushing headlines from all corners of the country.

The hagiography festival made a particularly grand to-do about the fact that George H.W. Bush was president when the Cold War ended. What the glowing obituaries obscured, however, was that Bush Sr. was a Cold Warrior of the first order, actively involved in a number of genuine atrocities that spanned the globe.

Most of Bush Sr.’s biography has been well documented for good and ill, but his time at the helm of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is seldom discussed in this hemisphere. He spent only a year in that job, but it was one of the bloodiest years South America has ever known. Fifteen years later, he personally, if inadvertently, opened the door for the proto-fascist takeover of his own party. Those two tales, combined with some other dark chapters of Bush Sr.’s life, frame a career in power and politics that did damage most everywhere it went.

As director of the CIA from 1976 to 1977, Bush Sr. was an integral part of a US government covert terrorism/torture program in South America. Known as Operation Condor by the participants, the program was aimed at destroying left-leaning governments and organizations they feared might come to support the Soviet Union. Forty years later, the horror and chaos unleashed by Operation Condor still plagues that region, and is a fair explanation for why massive caravans of asylum-seeking migrants continue to arrive at the US-Mexico border.

Documents that were recently declassified reveal that the “Dirty War” in Argentina, the Augusto Pinochet regime in Chile, Alfredo Stoessner’s dictatorship in Paraguay and other atrocities across the continent were actively supported by the US government. Thousands of leftist peasants, union leaders, teachers, students, priests, and nuns were slaughtered, imprisoned and tortured, and George Herbert Walker Bush went to work every day at CIA headquarters to make sure it happened.

Many years later, when Bush Sr. rose to accept the Republican nomination for president in 1988, he made a fateful promise. “Read my lips,” he told the enthusiastic crowd, “no new taxes.” He broke that pledge in 1990, and in doing so dropped an atomic bomb on politics in the United States. Breaking that pledge infuriated the conservative wing of his party, which was deeply suspicious of Bush’s internationalist leanings to begin with.

The fascist upswelling that came in the wake of his broken campaign promise is as much a part of Bush Sr.’s legacy as the crisis at the southern border. Operation Condor happened even though the TV people this weekend chose to leave it off the script. The GOP’s neo-fascist twist erupted during Sr.’s administration. Both are side effects of the Cold War that will be with us for many years to come, and deserve their own wing in Bush Sr.’s library down in College Station.

Spiked Drink Charge

Palm Beach Post, Delray doctor accused of drugging woman’s drink at Boca bar, Olivia Hitchcock, Dec. 4, 2018. A Delray Beach doctor accused of slipping drugs into a woman’s drink at a Boca Raton bar has been arrested on a poisoning charge, city police records show.

Dr. Mircea Albin Morariu, 50, of Boca Raton was booked early Tuesday into the Palm Beach County Jail on a charge of poisoning food or drink with the intent to either kill or injure someone. His attorney, Guy Fronstin, said Tuesday morning that the arrest report is “one-sided” against his client, whom he describe as “a highly trained neurologist.”

Judge Dina Keever-Agrama ordered Morariu be held in the jail until he can be placed into a treatment facility. It was not immediately clear what type of treatment he would undergo. However, Keever-Agrama stressed that Morariu only would be released from the jail to an in-patient treatment center, and that if he does not remain at the center, he will be booked back into the county jail and held without the possibility of posting bond.

Records indicate that on the night of Sept. 10, Morariu met up with a woman at Ouzo Bay, a Greek restaurant in Mizner Park. The two had known for nearly two decades, the woman told authorities, and they were meeting to discuss his recent engagement.

Dec. 3

Trump Probes

Palmer Report, Opinion: The next four days are everything, Bill Palmer, Dec. 3, 2018. We’ve been waiting a long, long time for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to finally blow the lid off Donald Trump’s crimes in public view. Now all indications are that we’re looking at a four day stretch – starting tomorrow – that’s going to change everything.

It all starts tomorrow when Robert Mueller is scheduled to finally file the plea deal sentencing memo for Michael Flynn, after a full year of cooperation. That filing will include details about the crimes that Flynn committed. NBC News is reporting tonight that Mueller, right, will make the Flynn filing public. So after all this mystery about what Flynn was really doing with Trump and Russia during the election and the transition period, and what he’s secretly given up to Mueller, we’re about to get answers. But it’s just the start.

This Friday, Robert Mueller is scheduled to file a sentencing memo for Paul Manafort, which will include a list of the things that Manafort was lying about when he violated the terms of the plea deal. Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News is confirming tonight that Mueller will make the Manafort filing public. Also on Friday, Mueller will file the sentencing memo for arguably his most valued cooperating witness, Michael Cohen; that document should detail the ways in which Cohen has helped Mueller to nail Donald Trump.

In other words, just about everything is about to come out.

Washington Post, Fact Checker Analysis: Trump’s misleading statements about a real estate project in Russia, Meg Kelly, Dec. 3, 2018. President Trump has repeatedly claimed he had “nothing to do with Russia,” whether in his business affairs or the 2016 campaign. Here are the facts.

Washington Post, Opinion: After the latest Mueller news, these corrupt Trump moves look much worse, Greg Sargent, Dec. 3, 2018. The latest revelations in the Russia saga should refocus our attention on a critical period during the 2016 presidential campaign. I’m talking about the seven weeks or so that began in June 2016, when Donald Trump Jr. planned the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russians, and ended in late July, with GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump publicly calling on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.

What we now know is this. During much of that period, the Trump Organization was secretly pursuing a business deal in Russia that required Kremlin approval — even though the most senior members of Trump’s own campaign, and possibly Trump himself, knew at the time that Russia was waging an attack designed to sabotage our democracy on Trump’s behalf and eagerly sought to help Russia carry it out.

On at least one occasion, Trump publicly absolved Russia of any blame for this attack — while apparently carrying on private financial dealings that involved the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Bush, CIA, Deep State

CIA Director George H.W. Bush hears a briefing in 1976 on June 17 following the assassination of two Americans in Lebanon (David Kennerly photo now with the National Archives)

Washington Post, Opinion: Bush practiced a CIA omerta that may have died with him, Tim Weiner, Dec. 3, 2018.  It was his spy service, right or wrong, and he protected it at all costs. George H.W. Bush loved the CIA. It was “part of my heartbeat,” he once said. He was the only president who ever ran the agency, and the last president who truly believed in its Cold War code: Admit nothing, deny everything.

The wall of silence cracked during the administration of Bush’s successor, Bill Clinton, when the FBI’s arrest of Aldrich Ames, a Russian mole who went undetected by the CIA for nine years, led the agency’s directors to denounce systemic flaws in the CIA’s integrity. The wall crumbled when the 9/11 Commission disclosed the CIA’s dead-wrong reporting on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a false case for a brutal war led by Bush’s son. By the time reporters brought to light the CIA’s secret prisons and its torture of terrorism suspects — the torture authorized by that son — the wall was dust.

Everything we know about the late president suggests that he might have been privately appalled by these failures of common law and common sense. But he never said anything — not in public. The CIA was his spy service, right or wrong. He protected it at all costs. Tim Weiner’s reporting and writing on national security have won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He is the author of “Enemies: A History of the FBI” and “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.”

U.S. Politics

New York Times, Despite Big House Losses, G.O.P. Shows No Signs of Course Correction, Jonathan Martin, Dec. 3, 2018 (print edition). The Republican Party, which stayed true to President Trump, is constrained from grappling with the damage he inflicted because of his popularity with its core supporters. But now a cadre of G.O.P. lawmakers are urging party officials to come to terms with why their 23-seat majority unraveled so spectacularly.

New York Times, Opinion: American Capitalism Isn’t Working, David Leonhardt, Dec. 3, 2018 (print edition). Not so long ago, corporate leaders understood they had a stake in the country’s prosperity.

Even when economic growth has been decent, as it is now, most of the bounty has flowed to the top. Median weekly earnings have grown a miserly 0.1 percent a year since 1979. The typical American family today has a lower net worth than the typical family did 20 years ago. Life expectancy, shockingly, has fallen this decade.

The solution will need to involve a return to higher taxes on the rich. But it’s also worth thinking about pre-tax incomes — and specifically what goes on inside corporations.

Global Economy

New York Times, Trade Truce Gives China and U.S. Political Breathing Room, Keith Bradsher and Alan Rappeport, Dec. 3, 2018 (print edition). President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China reached an agreement to effectively pause their trade war and work toward a pact. Both sides immediately positioned it as a domestic victory while staking out areas where they would not compromise.

Homeless After Fires

New York Times, After a California Wildfire, New and Old Homeless Populations Collide, Alexandra S. Levine, Dec. 3, 2018. Butte County had 2,000 homeless people and a crisis on its hands before the Camp Fire’s devastation added tens of thousands more to their ranks. Tensions are growing between those who were already homeless and the newly homeless, as each group reaches for the other’s resources.

Climate Change

Washington Post, Trump’s skepticism of climate science echoes across GOP, Matt Viser, Dec. 3, 2018. The Republican Party, whose leaders once largely accepted the reality of climate change, is following the lead of a doubtful president.

Watergate History / Cover-up

Washington Post, The Cuban spy and Watergate burglar who won a presidential pardon, Shane O’Sullivan, Dec. 3, 2018. How Cuba and the Kennedy assassination led to the pardon of Rolando Eugenio Martínez.

In anticipation of the Mueller report, political commentators and historians have drawn numerous parallels with Watergate and the impeachment proceedings against President Richard M. Nixon. A month after Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, President Gerald R. Ford pardoned him. But history has forgotten the only other man granted a presidential pardon for his role in the Watergate crimes, and why the pardon was given.

Watergate burglar Rolando Eugenio Martínez was a veteran of more than 300 infiltration missions into Cuba for the CIA during the secret war on Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. He was also the only Watergate burglar still on the agency’s payroll at the time of the break-in.

He was recruited for the Watergate operation by E. Howard Hunt, the former CIA liaison to the Cuban “government in exile” in Miami before the Bay of Pigs invasion. By the summer of 1971, Hunt had retired from the agency and taken up a new job as a security consultant for the Nixon White House.

Incensed by the publication of the Pentagon Papers, Nixon ordered a smear campaign against whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, so Hunt recruited Martínez and two other Cubans to break into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in Beverly Hills, Calif. Their goal? To find embarrassing secrets that could destroy Ellsberg’s reputation in the press. Hunt subsequently employed an expanded Cuban team to break into the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee in May and June 1972.

Amid rumors that Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern had financial support from Cuba, Hunt sent Martínez into DNC headquarters to find and photograph documentary evidence of collusion between Democrats and Castro. Martínez believed the Ellsberg and Watergate break-ins were “national security” operations being run through Hunt at the White House with the blessing of the CIA. After all, the agency was still paying Martínez a retainer of a hundred dollars a month to report on Cubans of intelligence interest arriving in Miami, and he had repeatedly told his case officer about his contact with Hunt.

Shane O’Sullivan is a documentary filmmaker, senior lecturer in filmmaking at Kingston University, London and author of the new book, “Dirty Tricks: Nixon, Watergate and the CIA.”

Mueller Probe

Palmer Report, Opinion: Confirmed: Robert Mueller is about to publicly drop the hammer on Paul Manafort and Donald Trump, Bill Palmer, Dec. 3, 2018. Last week Special Counsel Robert Mueller made a point of blowing up the cooperating plea deal with Paul Manafort, revealing in the process that Manafort had been conspiring with Donald Trump behind Mueller’s back. Mueller moved for immediate sentencing, which meant that he’d have to tell the judge precisely what Manafort lied about. The question was whether those details would be made public. Now we have our answer – and we know when it’ll happen.

Robert Mueller’s office, which rarely says anything to anyone, is making a point of telling respected political reporter Michael Isikoff that the Paul Manafort filing – which will happen this Friday – will be made public. Although there is the possibility that portions of it could be strategically redacted, we are at least about to find out most of what Manafort lied to Mueller about. So why is relevant to Donald Trump?

Considering that Manafort was secretly plotting with Trump the entire time to try to sabotage Mueller, it seems logical that Manafort was lying to Mueller about his Trump-related crimes. Mueller has clearly gotten to the truth without Manafort’s help, or else he wouldn’t have known that Manafort was lying to him. Now this public court filing allows Mueller to put the truth out there about the crimes that Manafort and Trump were committing together.

We’re now seeing what Robert Mueller’s strategy looks like. Ahead of any final report and big fish arrests, Mueller is using court proceedings to incrementally expose Donald Trump’s crimes to the public. This appears to be Mueller’s way of convincing the public that Trump and everyone around him is guilty, in order to build broader support for the Trump takedown he’s about to attempt. Mueller is still keeping his final takedown strategy a secret.

Dershowitz Asserts Innocence

Salon, Letter to the Editor: Alan Dershowitz responds: Sex allegations are “outright false” and “thoroughly disproved,” Alan Dershowitz, right, Dec. 2, 2018. Law professor writes that sexual allegations against him were invented and have been “conclusively disproved.” 

Alan Dershowitz, the former Harvard law professor and prominent civil-liberties attorney, wrote this response to the Salon article referenced below, published on Nov. 30. That article was primarily sourced from an earlier report in the Miami Herald that mentioned a 2015 affidavit containing allegations against Dershowitz. He has consistently and vigorously denied those allegations, and here supplies evidence that they were withdrawn. Our earlier article has been updated and clarified to reflect this.

Dec. 2

Trump Cabinet Corruption

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Opinion: Trump Labor Secretary cited in pedophile sweetheart deal, Dec. 2, 2018. The rumored nomination of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, right, as Attorney General in the wake of Jeff Sessions’s firing is apparently what spurred The Miami Herald to publish a detailed three-part series look at the sweetheart plea agreement worked out by Acosta with convicted child molester and Donald Trump’s close friend Jeffrey Epstein.

The Miami Herald story resulted in a public rebuke for the story’s reporter, Julie Brown, from former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, who appears to have taken over as Trump’s “muscle” to attack journalists who investigate Trump and those tied to him.

Saudi Murder Most Foul

Washington Post, Saudi crown prince exchanged messages with aide alleged to have overseen Khashoggi killing, Shane Harris and Souad Mekhennet, Dec. 2, 2018 (print edition). In the hours before and after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, and a senior aide who allegedly oversaw the assassination exchanged multiple messages, according to people familiar with the matter.

The communications between the two men are another piece of evidence tying the crown prince to the killing of Khashoggi, left, a former palace insider turned prominent critic, who also was a contributing columnist to The Washington Post.

The CIA included the existence of the messages in its classified assessment that Mohammed is likely to have ordered Khashoggi’s death, a view that agency officials have shared with members of Congress and the White House.

Mohammed exchanged the messages on Oct. 2 with Saud al-Qahtani, one of his closest aides and a fierce public supporter who has kept a blacklist of those he deems disloyal to the kingdom. The content of the messages, and what form the messages took, was not known, according to people familiar with the matter.

More Middle Eastern News

Washington Post, Israeli police recommend charging Netanyahu in third corruption case, Ruth Eglash​, Dec. 2, 2018. Israeli police on Sunday recommended indicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of bribery and corruption in a third case — this time on suspicion that the leader eased business regulations for the country’s largest telecommunications company in exchange for favorable coverage for him and his wife on a popular news website owned by the firm.

Police have also recommended that media mogul Shaul Elovitch — a close friend of Netanyahu and majority shareholder of Bezeq, the telecoms firm that owns the news site Walla — be indicted for his alleged role in the affair. Elovitch’s wife, Iris, and Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, were also implicated in the case, known as Case 4000.

Associated Press via Washington Post, US naval commander in Middle East found dead in Bahrain home, Staff report, Dec. 2, 2018 (print edition). The commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the U.S. Fifth Fleet has been found dead in his residence in Bahrain. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson says Vice Adm. Scott Stearney, shown last spring, was found dead Saturday. Richardson says the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Bahraini Ministry of Interior are investigating the death, but foul play is not suspected.

Mueller Probe

New York Times, Analysis: Mueller Exposes the Culture of Lying That Surrounds Trump, Sharon LaFraniere, Dec. 2, 2018 (print edition). The president has demanded loyalty of advisers, including an embrace of his habitual boasts, misstatements and outright falsehoods; Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, asked a judge that he be allowed to avoid prison when he is sentenced.

When Michael D. Cohen admitted this past week to lying to Congress about a Russian business deal, he said he had testified falsely out of loyalty to President Trump. When he admitted this summer to lying on campaign finance records about payments to cover up a sex scandal during the campaign, he said it was at Mr. Trump’s direction.

Paul Manafort, left, and Rick Gates, former senior Trump campaign officials, lied to cover up financial fraud. George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide, lied in hopes of landing an administration job. And Michael T. Flynn, another adviser, lied about his interactions with a Russian official and about other matters for reasons that remain unclear.

If the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, right, has proved anything in his 18-month-long investigation — besides how intensely Russia meddled in an American presidential election — it is that Mr. Trump surrounded himself throughout 2016 and early 2017 with people to whom lying seemed to be second nature.

They lied to federal authorities even when they had lawyers advising them, even when the risk of getting caught was high and even when the consequences for them were dire.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Devin Nunes is about to get his come-uppance, Bill Palmer, Dec. 2, 2018.  or the past year and a half we’ve watched House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes bend over backward to try to protect Donald Trump from his Trump-Russia scandal, in increasingly buffoonish and criminal fashion. But it turns out Nunes’ plan was based on the assumption that the GOP would keep the House, or perhaps based on no forward thinking at all, because that plan is rapidly blowing up in his face.

Among numerous other stupid ideas, Devin Nunes, right, decided to bring in a whole bunch of Trump-Russia people and have them testify before the House Intel Committee that they didn’t do anything wrong, so he could push out a report “clearing” all of them, before legitimate investigators like Robert Mueller and the Senate Intel Committee could publish legitimate reports.

In so doing, Nunes had these people commit perjury. According to Eric Swalwell, a Democrat on the House Intel Committee, the transcripts of all that testimony are currently locked in the basement of Congress.

Washington Post, Supreme Court to consider case that could affect potential Manafort prosecutions, Robert Barnes, Dec. 2, 2018. The Supreme Court next week takes up the case of a small-time Alabama felon, Terance Gamble, who complains that his convictions by state and federal prosecutors for the same gun possession crime violate constitutional protections against double jeopardy.

But likely to be watching the proceedings closely will be those concerned about a big-time felon, Republican consultant and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was prosecuted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III for tax fraud.

With President Trump keeping alive prospects that he might pardon Manafort, Gamble v. United States might be redubbed Manafort v. Mueller, joked Thomas C. Goldstein, an attorney who regularly argues before the Supreme Court.

The outcome in the case could affect nascent plans by states to prosecute Manafort, left, under their own tax evasion laws — New York, in particular, has expressed interest — should Trump pardon Manafort on his federal convictions.

The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Constitution’s 5th Amendment prohibits more than one prosecution or punishment for the same offense. But the Supreme Court since the 1850s has made an exception, allowing successive prosecutions and punishments if one is brought by state prosecutors and the other by the federal government. (One early case from that time involved counterfeiting; another was prosecution of someone harboring a fugitive slave.)

In Gamble, the court is reconsidering these precedents. Almost none of the briefs filed in the case speculate on how a presidential pardon of a federal conviction would affect prosecutors at the state level should the so-called separate sovereigns doctrine be renounced.

Inside TrumpWorld

Palmer Report, Opinion: It’s time for Mike Pence to panic, Bill Palmer, Dec. 2, 2018. Now that Trump is circling the drain, Pence is theoretically closer to the Oval Office than ever – but he’s also in some real danger.

For reasons still only known to him, Kremlin puppet Paul Manafort bent over backward to get Donald Trump to pick Mike Pence to be his running mate. This made little strategic sense, as Pence, left, had a very low approval rating as Governor of Indiana.

If the goal was to simply pick an evangelical in order to get the extremist vote, there were more viable options. This has always raised the question of whether the Kremlin – when it was dictating all of Manafort’s other moves – also told him to have Trump pick Pence. More directly, was Pence a Russian asset?

Now that Manafort has flunked his cooperating plea deal, it’s hard to imagine that he gave up Mike Pence to Robert Mueller. That said, plenty of other people were around when Manafort picked Pence, and there’s a good chance Manafort’s longtime sidekick Rick Gates – who has since cut a cooperating plea deal – gave him up to Mueller. But then there’s the real ace in the hole.

We all saw Mike Pence go on national television and insist that Michael Flynn never had any transition period contact with the Russian Ambassador. Then we learned that Congressman Elijah Cummings had informed Pence of it, in writing, six weeks earlier. Why did Pence go out and lie to cover for Flynn? Considering that Flynn has cut a plea deal, Robert Mueller knows by now for sure.

So we’re not just dealing with the question of whether Donald Trump will be ousted, allowing Mike Pence to inherit the presidency. We’re also dealing with the question of whether Trump and Pence will both be ousted, if not simultaneously, then not all that far apart from each other. For Mike Pence, judgment day is coming – and it’s time for him to panic.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump has humiliating G20 moment with Prime Minister of Japan, Bill Palmer, Dec. 2, 2018. The Prime Minister of Japan, right, walked up to Donald Trump at the G20 summit, and according to Jonathan Allen of NBC News, said “I want to congratulate you on your historic victory in the midterm election in the United States.” Let’s be clear here. Shinzo is not some idiot, so he knows full well that Trump got wiped out in the midterms. So why say it?

We’ve all seen that Donald Trump is such a malignant narcissist, and so far removed from reality, you can easily play him simply by buttering him up and telling him the same lies he keeps repeating. Shinzo has clearly figured this out, and he used it disarm Trump at the G20. So now Trump has reached the point of humiliation where world leaders are now using his broken psyche to gain the upper hand in diplomatic negotiations with him. The scary part is that, even as the entire world laughs, Trump doesn’t even know he’s being played.

Pop Culture Political Focus

 New York Times, Alec Baldwin Returns to ‘S.N.L.’ as Trump, Dave Itzkoff, Dec. 2, 2018 (6 min. video). In just his second “Saturday Night Live” appearance this season — and his first since his arrest following a dispute over a parking space — Alec Baldwin returned to the program this weekend to portray President Trump in a comedy sketch set at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Argentina.

In the show’s cold open, Baldwin stood on a hotel balcony, complaining to Melania Trump (played by cast member Cecily Strong) that he’d been having trouble sleeping. “I keep having this nightmare where I’m walking through a forest of blood,” he said.

Strong replied, “No, no, that was just my Christmas decorations.”

Baldwin, a frequent “S.N.L.” guest who has portrayed President Trump on the show since 2016, said at the start of this season that he intended to play the role less often. As Trump in the “S.N.L.” sketch, Baldwin referenced his own legal troubles, complaining at one point, “God, I haven’t been this upset since I flipped out over that parking space.”

He also traded quips with Kate McKinnon, playing Rudy Giuliani, who is representing the president as a defense lawyer in the Mueller investigation. Asked by Baldwin how the legal defense was coming, McKinnon answered, “Well, I’m involved, so it’s not great. This might be the first time someone’s lawyer pleads insanity.”

Dec. 1

Bush Death, Legacy, Criticism

New York Times, George H.W. Bush, Who Steered Nation Through Turbulent Era, Dies at 94, Adam Nagourney, Dec. 1, 2018 (print edition). Mr. Bush, a Republican, was the 41st president of the United States and the father of the 43rd [shown together above in a 2001 photo in the White House Oval Officie]. He was the last of the World War II generation to occupy the Oval Office. His one-term presidency during the tumultuous period at the end of the Cold War capped four decades in public service.

Mr. Bush (shown at right in a 1989 photo) had a form of Parkinson’s disease that forced him to use a wheelchair or motorized scooter in recent years, and he had been in and out of hospitals during that time as his health declined. In April, a day after attending Mrs. Bush’s funeral, he was treated for an infection that had spread to his blood. In 2013, he was in dire enough shape with bronchitis that former President George W. Bush, his son, solicited ideas for a eulogy.

But he proved resilient each time. In 2013 he told well-wishers, through an aide, to “put the harps back in the closet.”

Roll Call, A Life in Photos: George H.W. Bush, Gillian Roberts, Dec 1, 2018. The 41st president died Friday at 94. George H.W. Bush died Friday at 94. The 41st president — and 43rd vice president, and onetime congressman, CIA director, United Nations ambassador, Republican National Committee chairman, oil tycoon and World War II naval pilot — was also father to the 43rd president, George W. Bush.

The younger Bush in a statement Friday remembered Bush Sr. as “a man of the highest character and the best dad a son or daughter could ask for.”

Roll Call delved into its archives to remember the former president’s days in D.C.

Roll Call, Shunned by McCain, Trumps Will Attend George H.W. Bush’s State Funeral, John T. Bennett, Dec. 1, 2018. 45th president will speak to former President George W. Bush on Saturday call. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will attend the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush, who died Friday night, the White House announced Saturday.

The Trumps were not invited to the National Cathedral funeral of Sen. John McCain, who died earlier this year. The late 41st president had been critical of Trump, once calling him a “blowhard.”

“A state funeral is being arranged with all of the accompanying support and honors. The President will designate Wednesday, Dec. 5 as a National Day Of Mourning,” she added. “He and the first lady will attend the funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.”

The Trumps hailed Bush in a statement released early Saturday morning.

“Through his essential authenticity, disarming wit, and unwavering commitment to faith, family, and country, President Bush inspired generations of his fellow Americans to public service—to be, in his words, ‘a thousand points of light’ illuminating the greatness, hope, and opportunity of America to the world,” the first couple said.

LewRockwell.com, Opinion: George Herbert Walker Bush, Charles Burris, Dec. 1, 2018. George H. W. Bush is dead. Regime journalists across the nation are scrambling to compose obituary prose concerning the late president. Here are hard cold facts which will not be included in such puerile accounts.

“Former reporter for the Houston Post, Pete Brewton [right, now a professor of journalism and law at Texas Tech University], tells of one of the most momentous stories of the past 50 years and how it has been suppressed by the establishment media and the Congress. Pete’s book The Mafia, CIA and George Bush, shows the incredible complexity of the relationships in the operation of the destruction of hundreds of Savings and Loans at the hands of the CIA and the Mafia, stealing many billions of dollars in the process, and leaving the taxpayers to bailout the banks.

Big names at the state and national levels of power are involved, including Lloyd Bentsen, the Bush family, and power brokers in Houston. People such as Charles Keating and Don Dixon, who are mentioned prominently in the press in connection with the S & L debacle, were merely front men or “cutouts” for the main movers. Keating and his ilk only took millions; the CIA and the Mafia looted billions.”

In his classic book on power elite analysis, The Yankee and Cowboy War, researcher Carl Oglesby divided up the Post-WWII American ruling class into two internecine factions: the northeastern seaboard Yankees versus the Sunbelt nouveau riche Cowboys. The amazing political success of George Herbert Walker Bush was his uncanny ability to stand astride and have one foot firmly planted in each of these competing factions.

Essential to understanding the Bush legacy is the historical background of the 1980 October Surprise when key individuals of the Reagan/Bush campaign covertly met with top members of the Iranian government to prevent the release of the 55 Americans held hostage in Tehran before the November election, ensuring the defeat of Democrat incumbent Jimmy Carter. The hostages were released on the day Ronald Reagan took office. Critical arm shipments, materiel and military supplies soon began flowing to the Khomeini regime, years before the more widely known Iran-Contra Scandal, which almost brought down the Reagan administration.

Barbara Honegger worked as a researcher at the Hoover Institution before joining the Ronald Reagan administration as a researcher and policy analyst in 1980. She was the Director of the Attorney General’s Anti-Discrimination Law Review at the Department of Justice. After leaving Washington, she became the Senior Military Affairs Journalist for the Naval Postgraduate School.

While working for Reagan, she discovered information that convinced her that George H. W. Bush and William Casey had conspired to make sure that Iran did not release the U.S. hostages until Jimmy Carter had been defeated in the 1980 presidential election.

In 1987, Honegger began leaking information to journalists about the Reagan administration.

However, it was not until Reagan left office that Honegger published October Surprise (1989). In her book, Honegger claimed that in 1980 William Casey and other representatives of the Reagan presidential campaign made a deal at two sets of meetings in July and August at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid with Iranians to delay the release of Americans held hostage in Iran until after the November 1980 presidential elections. Reagan’s aides promised that they would get a better deal if they waited until Carter was defeated.

For more on the sordid backstory of epic criminality of Bush see the following volumes:

The Mafia, CIA & George Bush, by Pete Brewton; Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, The Powerful Forces That Put It In The White House, And What Their Influence Means For America, by Russ Baker; American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, by Kevin Phillips; Secrecy And Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, by Robert Parry; American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan, by Peter Dale Scott (shown at right); Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, by Terry Reed and John Cummings; and The Iran Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era, by Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter.

[See also: George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, by Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin.]

Mueller Probe

New York Times, Trump Fund-Raiser Received Laundered Foreign Money, Prosecutors Say, Kenneth P. Vogel, Dec. 1, 2018 (print edition). Federal prosecutors cited the involvement of a onetime top fund-raiser to President Trump on Friday in a scheme to launder millions of dollars into the country to help a flamboyant Malaysian financier end a Justice Department investigation.

Elliott Broidy, right, a Los Angeles-based businessman who was a finance vice chairman of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and inauguration committees, was paid to lobby the Trump administration to try to end an investigation related to the embezzlement of billions of dollars from a Malaysian state-owned fund, according to court filings made public on Friday.

The filings were released in connection with a guilty plea entered by George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department employee. Mr. Higginbotham admitted to conspiring to lie to banks about the source of tens of millions of dollars he funneled into the United States from the Malaysian financier Jho Low, who federal authorities say masterminded a scheme to loot the 1 Malaysia Development Berhad fund, also known as 1MDB.

In his guilty plea, Mr. Higginbotham admitted that he and the entertainer and businessman Pras Michel, a former member of the Fugees, a defunct hip-hop group, arranged for millions of dollars of Mr. Low’s money to be transferred to a law firm owned by Mr. Broidy’s wife to pay them to try to end the 1MDB investigation. Mr. Higginbotham, who left the Justice Department in August, was not involved in the department’s investigation of Mr. Low, and is cooperating with prosecutors.

A draft agreement called for a $75 million “success fee” to be paid to Mr. Broidy if the investigation was resolved within 180 days, or $50 million if it was resolved within 365 days.

The charging papers and supporting documents do not identify Mr. Broidy or his wife, Robin Rosenzweig, by name, and neither has been charged with a crime. But the facts of the case align with previous reporting on Mr. Broidy’s efforts related to 1MDB, as well as emails from Mr. Broidy that were stolen from Ms. Rosenzweig’s account and disseminated to news outlets that match emails cited in Friday’s court filings.

Mr. Broidy, who pleaded guilty in 2009 in an unrelated pension fund bribery case, is one of several Trump associates whose business with foreign governments and figures has attracted scrutiny, including from investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

A veteran Republican fund-raiser who also owns a defense contracting firm, Mr. Broidy had seemed positioned to become a highly influential figure in a political hierarchy that was upended by Mr. Trump’s victory. Mr. Broidy had started raising money for Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign at a time when most elite Republican donors were staying away. After Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Broidy marketed his connection to the new administration to politicians, businessmen and governments around the world, including some with unsavory records, and won big contracts for his defense firm.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Michael Cohen’s new sentencing memo may have just taken down some of Trump’s White House advisers, Daniel Cotter, Dec. 1, 2018. Late on Friday, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer and keeper of secrets beyond imagination, filed his Sentencing Memorandum with the Southern District of New York. In the memo, which refers to Trump as “Client 1,” Cohen through his lawyers writes about the false statements:

“Michael’s false statements to Congress likewise sprung regrettably from Michael’s effort, as a loyal ally and then champion of Client-1, to support and advance Client-1’s political messaging. At the time that he was requested to appear before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Michael was serving as personal attorney to the President, and followed daily the political messages that both Client-1 and his staff and supporters repeatedly and forcefully broadcast.

Furthermore, in the weeks during which his then-counsel prepared his written response to the Congressional Committees, Michael remained in close and regular contact with White House based-staff and legal counsel to Client-1.”

What the last paragraph does not directly state, but alludes to, is that both White House staff and legal counsel to Trump were fully aware of what Cohen was preparing to submit to Congress. It also suggests that they may have been involved assisting Cohen in drafting such responses.

Washington Post, Acting AG Whitaker has suggested that Trump plays with the truth, Aaron C. Davis and Ilana Marcus, Dec. 1, 20189 (print edition). A review of hundreds of public comments by acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker shows that while he has primarily functioned as a defender of President Trump, he has also criticized the president on numerous occasions, sometimes harshly, while working as a commentator on radio and television.

Whitaker has repeatedly suggested that Trump plays with the truth. He has said Trump should release his tax returns and was “self-serving” in the way he fired FBI Director James B. Comey. Whitaker said during the run-up to the 2016 election that neither Trump nor Hillary Clinton were very good options for the presidency. “I mean, both these candidates are unlikable,” he said.

The critique of the president by Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney who rose to prominence over the past four years as the head of a conservative nonprofit group, has often come in unguarded moments, and sometimes late into on-air discussions. “Sometimes I wonder if anybody has the president’s ear or if he just kind of watches news accounts and responds to, which is a little dangerous,” Whitaker said in June 2017 on a radio show.

New York Times, Whitaker’s Ascent Surprised Investigators of Firm Accused of Fraud, Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman and Katie Benner, Dec. 1, 2018 (print edition). Matthew G. Whitaker, right, the acting attorney general, sat on the board of a patent firm that was investigated by the Federal Trade Commission. Newly disclosed documents shed light on Mr. Whitaker’s involvement with the company and investigators’ stunned reaction to his rise at the Justice Department.

As Federal Trade Commission lawyers investigated a Miami company accused of defrauding thousands of customers, they were stunned to learn last year about a new job for a figure in their inquiry, Matthew G. Whitaker: He had been named chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“You’re not going to believe this… Matt Whitaker is now chief of staff to the Attorney General. Of the United States,” James Evans, an F.T.C. lawyer, wrote to colleagues in an email on Oct. 24, 2017.

The emails were part of a trove of files the trade commission made public on Friday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests for documents about its investigation into the company, World Patent Marketing. Mr. Whitaker sat on its advisory board.

In early November, President Trump fired Mr. Sessions and installed Mr. Whitaker as the acting attorney general.

His appointment immediately prompted outcry in part because Mr. Whitaker had sharply criticized the special counsel investigation into Russia’s election interference and possible ties to Trump associates, which he now oversees as the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Democrats have expressed alarm and vowed to investigate Mr. Whitaker when they take over the House of Representatives in January.

Raw Story, Trump pal Jerome Corsi has only raised $3,500 of his $250K legal defense fund after 4 days of begging, Bob Brigham, Dec. 1, 2018. Jerome Corsi, shown in a screenshot at right, expects to be indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller. Corsi is known as the “birther king” for launching the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. He has refused a plea deal and has said he’s going to file a “criminal complaint” against the special counsel.

Corsi’s legal defense team has at least two attorneys, David Gray and Larry Klayman. In an attempt to create a war chest for legal battle against the special prosecutor, Corsi has taken to the online fundraising site GoFundMe to raise money.

However, in the four days since the page was launched, only 69 people have contributed. While Corsi set the goal of raising $250,000, only $3,510 has been raised as of publication.

Trump, G-20 Leadership Meeting

A U.S. delegation, at right, led by President Trump meets a Chinese delegation led by President Xi Jinping at the G 20 Summit in Argentina this month.

Roll Call, Trump, China’s Xi Agree to End Trade and Tariff Standoff, John T. Bennett, Dec. 1, 2018.  Lawmakers have been split on how tough Trump should be on Beijing. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday agreed to what amounts to a cease-fire on a monthslong trade tiff.

“President Trump has agreed that on January 1, 2019, he will leave the tariffs on $200 billion worth of product at the 10 percent rate, and not raise it to 25 percent at this time,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.

“China will agree to purchase a not yet agreed upon, but very substantial, amount of agricultural, energy, industrial, and other product from the United States to reduce the trade imbalance between our two countries. China has agreed to start purchasing agricultural product from our farmers immediately,” Sanders said.

Reuters via CNBC, Watch Putin and Mohammed bin Salman’s exuberant handshake at G-20, Nov. 30, 2018.

The hearty greeting at the G-20 between Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia comes as international leaders are confronting how to approach the crown prince, who has been blamed for the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

New York Times, Dodging Friends, Chased by Legal Woes, Trump Navigates G-20, Mark Landler and Peter Baker, Dec. 1, 2018 (print edition). President Trump’s first day at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Buenos Aires was a window into his idiosyncratic statecraft. Mr. Trump’s “America First” foreign policy has left him with a strange patchwork of partners at global gatherings.

Reuters via The Guardian, Trump walks off leaving Mauricio Macri standing alone at G20, Staff report, Nov. 30, 2018 (31 sec. video here). The Argentinian president was left alone on stage when his US counterpart, Donald Trump, walked away due to a misunderstanding during a photo opportunity. Both leaders shook hands before Trump left the stage, with Macri appearing to call after him. It appeared the Argentinian wanted Trump to remain on the stage as they awaited other world leaders for an official members’ ‘family photograph’ Inside Washington

New York Times, Extraordinary Attack on Democratic Lawmaker, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Coral Davenport, Dec. 1, 2018 (print edition). Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, right, accused a high-ranking House Democrat on Friday of paying “hush money” to cover up excessive drinking and a hostile work environment after the lawmaker wrote an op-ed calling for the secretary to resign.

The statement by Mr. Zinke, a former Republican House member, was an extraordinary breach of the norms that usually govern relationships between senior government officials, particularly a Cabinet secretary and a member of a Congressional committee overseeing his department.

The lawmaker, Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, shown at left, Democrat of Arizona, is in line to be chairman of the Natural Resources Committee with the new Congress in January, and has been making a case that Mr. Zinke should resign because of ethical questions surrounding his tenure at the Interior Department.

“It’s hard for him to think straight from the bottom of the bottle,” Mr. Zinke wrote in a statement posted on his official Twitter account. He continued, “He should resign and pay back the taxpayer hush money and the tens of thousands of dollars he forced my department to spent investigating unfounded allegations.”

Washington Post, Six White House officials reprimanded for violating Hatch Act, Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Juliet Eilperin​, Dec. 1, 20189 (print edition). Meanwhile, the Office of Special Counsel sought to clarify when federal employees could use words like “impeachment” or “resist” without breaking the law.

Alaskan Quake Reports

New York Times, Earthquake Shreds Highways and Sows Panic in South Central Alaska, Anne Hillman, Jack Healy and Henry Fountain, Dec. 1, 2018 (print edition). A magnitude-7.2 earthquake near Anchorage damaged buildings and roads, and briefly stoked fears of a tsunami throughout the region.

It lasted just 30 seconds. But that was enough on Friday morning for a magnitude-7 earthquake to rip open roads, send streetlights crashing to the ground and leave Alaska’s quake-hardened residents panicked and reeling.

And it sent Kelsey Green sprawling to the floor. At her office in Anchorage, windows shattered and ceiling tiles rained down. When it was over, Ms. Green and her co-workers ran outside into a world that had been shaken up like a snow globe. There was now a 50-foot crack in the parking lot.

Craig Medred News, Commentary: Resilience, Craig Medred, Dec. 1, 2018. Craig Medred is an independent Alaska journalist who has worked out of Fairbanks, Juneau and Anchorage.

The earthquake that rocked Anchorage Friday morning was felt by Mark Reed as it was felt by everyone else in the state’s largest city. A 7.0 centered almost beneath your neighborhood is hard to miss. But it didn’t change Reed’s day. As the owner of a small, old-fashioned gas station and garage in South Anchorage, Reed had work to do, and since Reed’s Auto Service was still standing, he went to work.

It was a busy morning. A lot of Alaskans were getting extra fuel for generators or gassing up their cars and trucks as city officials warned them to prepare to “shelter in place.”

At one point, with other gas stations in the area shut down because of minor damage, Reed had customers lined up for more than a block. He himself was on the phone trying to figure out whether a scheduled delivery of fuel was going to make it. It didn’t.

Reed confessed he’d been so busy since just after the quake struck that he hadn’t had a chance to catch up on the quake news. When he finally opened his computer and checked his news browser, he noted that five of the top six stories were about the Alaska shake.

He laughed about a couple of them. Bloomberg news was headlining that the Alaska oil pipeline was threatened. Reed worked on that pipeline and knew it was designed to withstand at least an 8.0 and had in 2002 withstood the Denali Fault earthquake.

That quake had a surface magnitude of 8.5, and it rocked an area far larger than the Friday trembler in the Anchorage metropolitan area.

A slip along a fault lines more than 200 miles long, the Denali quake “was felt as far as Washington (state) and caused seiches in pools and lakes as far as Texas and Louisiana,” the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) later reported. “There were reports of triggered seismicity in volcanic and geothermal centers in Washington and California and regional seismicity in Utah.”

By way of comparison, the Anchorage quake was small and localized, and though after shocks rattled the state’s largest urban area through the day, Alaskans largely went about their business as if the day were like any other, only with a few extra chores to be done.Costco seizes opportunity

JIP Editor’s Note: This reporter’s brother and sister-in-law, both longtime residents of Anchorage affected by the earthquake, reported that the account above accurately reflected quake damage that appeared to them far more modest than national news accounts conveyed.

Late Nov. 30 News

Mueller Probe

Palmer Report, Opinion: Vladimir Putin signals the end of Donald Trump, Bill Palmer, Dec. 1, 2018. It’s difficult to tell who was trying harder to avoid whom, when Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin all but pretended they didn’t know each other at the opening of the G20 summit.

But the telling moment came when Putin then walked over and high-fived the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, a clear show of excited solidarity between two murderous leaders who each hold puppet strings over the “President of the United States.” Ultimately, however, the real upshot came when Putin issued a statement about his canceled G20 meeting with Trump.

Moments after Michael Cohen revealed in court that Donald Trump had been plotting with Russian election riggers to build Trump Tower Moscow during the election, Trump announced that he was canceling his planned one-on-one meeting with Putin at the G20. There was no doubt as to the real reason, but Trump used the convenient cover story of Russia’s recent military aggression against Ukraine. It turns out Putin wasn’t happy with that explanation.

Putin’s spokesperson announced during the G20 summit that Donald Trump had more likely canceled the meeting due to “the U.S. domestic political situation” – which was a clear reference to the developments in the Trump-Russia scandal. Here’s the thing.

Putin knowns that the best way he could help Trump right now would be to go along with the cover story that this was about Ukraine. Instead, Putin decided to deliver a dagger by pointing out that Trump, rather obviously, canceled the meeting because of his own worsening scandals. It’s now clear that Putin isn’t even willing to provide Trump any cover on these things. And if Putin isn’t willing to prop Trump up anymore, then it signals the end of Trump. Putin must now be calculating that he’s personally better off if Trump sinks than swims.

New York Times, Opinion: Trump Is Compromised by Russia, Michelle Goldberg, Nov. 30, 2018 (print edition). Michael Cohen’s latest plea is proof. One of the chief questions in the Trump-Russia scandal has been whether Vladimir Putin has leverage over the president of the United States, and, if so, what that leverage looks like. The significance of the fabled “pee tape,” after all, is not that it would reveal Donald Trump to be a pervert bent on defiling the place where Barack Obama slept. Rather, the tape matters because, if real, it would show the president to be vulnerable to Russian blackmail. (Putin aide Dmitry Peskov is shown at right.)

That’s also why evidence of Trump’s business involvement with Russia would be significant, as Trump himself acknowledged shortly before his inauguration, when he tweeted, “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA — NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”

We still don’t know for certain if Russia has used leverage over Trump. But there should no longer be any doubt that Russia has leverage over him.

Fox News, Opinion: The Mueller investigation has come up empty on Russia — You won’t believe what’s coming next, Mark Penn, Nov. 30, 2018. The pattern and purpose of Mueller’s investigation and the endgame is becoming clear, and yes, it’s clearly get the president at all costs. The team Mueller hired really foretold the story — Andrew Weissmann as the stop-at-nothing pit bull and a group of Democratic-leaning lawyers, including some who have represented the Clintons, had the obstruction of justice charge ready to go on day one.

Trump’s first team of lawyers with their “don’t worry and cooperate” strategy set the president back, and let the whole thing spiral out of control. The investigation, I believe, has come up truly empty on its central charge related to the president — collusion with the Russian government. They are now trying to find someone, anyone who had any contact with Julian Assange with the aim of calling that collusion-lite. But mostly what Mueller’s team is doing is bludgeoning witnesses on unrelated charges to piece together a case against the president. They are shaping that case through the indictments — and threats of indictments — that are being used to get guilty pleas to make the president seem like an obstructor or co-conspirator. They are literally creating the crimes. Let’s review what Mueller and his team are doing:

#Me Too Scandals

National Review, Hollywood Is a Sex-Grooming Gang, Kyle Smith, Nov. 30, 2018. Where the ‘price of admission’ is stripping on camera, or worse. If you’re tempted to turn away from the torrent of squalid news that continues to flow out of Hollywood, resist the temptation. The more of these revolting exposes you read, the more clearly you will see the underlying monstrosity in Hollywood, as clearly as the hero of John Carpenter’s They Live sees aliens disguised as everyday people when he puts on the sunglasses.

Former CBS chief Les Moonves’s career had already ended in disgrace for repeated instances of alleged sexual harassment and assault uncovered last summer by The New Yorker. Yet until this week the board that fired him for preying on women was planning to beg His Majesty’s forgiveness for decoupling him from his kingdom, pressing into his hands a $120 million payoff.

Maybe not anymore.

The New York Times, with the cooperation of a washed-up talent manager who, at 75, decided to open his mouth about Moonves (right), reported on how the triangular sex trade works in Hollywood. Innocent young sweet pea from some place like South Carolina hits town, desperate for a break.

Managers and agents and suchlike human succubi latch on to her with an eye toward turning her out. Knowing very well what will happen, they send her in to “take a meeting,” alone, behind closed doors, with some old lech in a designer suit. After two minutes of pleasantries, the expensive pants are suddenly down around the ankles. The young thing has just about two seconds to grow up. She has to decide on the spot whether to react with the expected sangfroid, and advance to the next step in the game of Hollywood, or, do what Bobbie Phillips did and react adversely. She contemplated picking up a baseball bat and going all Al Capone on her attacker, but instead merely “ankled,” as the trades would put it.

Phillips says Les Moonves, then the head of Warner Bros. television just as its shows Friends and ER were becoming blockbusters, grabbed her and forced her to perform oral sex when she met with him to seek an appointment with a casting director. She fled the office. Then she had to decide whether to say something, which would brand her a “troublemaker.” If so, nothing good would happen. She’d be ushered out to pursue the career opportunities at Denny’s, and another young honey would take her place.

Phillips’s life was pretty much ruined. Going to audition meetings made her queasy. Once she vomited in an alley at the prospect of running into Moonves. No one cared. She was another expendable female body. Twenty-three years later, Moonves was suddenly interested in casting her again. Texts between Moonves and Phillips’s manager, as reported by the Times, are frankly transactional: The manager needed to get back in the game, Moonves needed the manager to keep schtum with the Times reporters who kept calling him, Phillips would be expected to remain silent in exchange for a lousy $1,500 one-day gig. “A central teaching in my life is forgiveness,” Phillips told the Times. But this was insulting. And she was upset that Moonves was still denying, even in private, what she says he did. Moonves says “I strongly believe” the encounter was consensual. Which is a bit different from saying, “It was consensual.”

“Nobody knows anything” was the Hollywood mantra popularized by the late screenwriter William Goldman.

Yet in a town that does nothing more assiduously than it does gossip, we’re expected to believe nobody knew anything about what was happening in Les Moonves’s office, and in Harvey Weinstein’s, and in Bryan Singer’s? It beggars belief. They knew. They all knew. The men knew. The women knew.

U.S. Politics

New York Times, Did a Tax Increase Tucked Into Trump’s Tax Cut Come Back to Bite Republicans? Jim Tankersley and Ben Casselman, Nov. 30, 2018 (print edition). Republicans capped a popular deduction for state and local taxes to pay for the tax bill. That may have hurt some House Republicans in the midterms.

President Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut was supposed to be a big selling point for congressional Republicans in the midterm elections. Instead, it appears to have done more to hurt than help Republicans in high-tax districts across California, New Jersey, Virginia and other states.

House Republicans suffered heavy Election Day losses in districts where large concentrations of taxpayers claim a popular tax break — the state and local tax deduction — which the law capped at $10,000 per household. The new limit resulted in an effective tax increase for high-earning residents of high-tax states who claim more than $10,000 per year in SALT.

Money Laundering

WhoWhatWhy, Deutsche Bank, Trump, and Russia: A WhoWhatWhy Primer, Staff report, Nov. 30, 2018. Early Thursday morning German authorities raided the global powerhouse Deutsche Bank in relation to a money laundering investigation. The raid was reportedly spurred by information garnered from the Panama Papers — the 2015 document leak that revealed how wealthy international figures hide their riches via offshore bank accounts and shady shell companies. The new House Democratic leadership may also investigate.

At WhoWhatWhy, we’ve been watching Deutsche for quite a while — particularly its activities in the United States, its involvement with Russia, and its ties to Donald Trump. Here’s our Deutsche primer:

Associated Press, Ex-US official admits charges linked to Malaysian scandal, Michael Balsamo, Nov. 30, 2018. A former Justice Department official admitted his role Friday in a multimillion-dollar effort to try to get the United States to drop its investigation into a money laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered billions from a Malaysian investment fund.

George Higginbotham’s guilty plea in federal court in Washington marked the first public acknowledgement of a secret attempt to pressure American officials to drop their probe of the fund known as 1MDB.

The massive corruption investigation, which upended Malaysian politics, spanned the globe with the money from the fund gambled in Las Vegas, spent on diamond jewelry and a luxury yacht and used to finance the “Wolf of Wall Street” and other Hollywood productions. The long-ruling coalition in Malaysia was ousted in a May election, and then-Prime Minister Najib Razak, who set up the fund, now faces criminal charges there.

Prosecutors say Higginbotham, who worked on the congressional affairs staff in the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs, helped open bank accounts and created false loan documents for shell companies to pay an influential person to pressure officials to drop their probe. That person’s identity wasn’t revealed in court.

Authorities allege that Higginbotham’s efforts were also meant to conceal the involvement of an unidentified co-conspirator, who prosecutors say was an architect of 1MDB and because of that, banks wouldn’t do business with him directly. Higginbotham admitted in court that bank accounts and shell companies were set up in 2017 because the influential person didn’t want to be directly tied to the co-conspirator.

Higginbotham falsely claimed in emails to banks that the money was being used to fund entertainment ventures and failed to disclose that it was, in fact, being used to finance the lobbying effort to shut down the 1MDB investigation, prosecutors said.

Higginbotham also traveled to a foreign country to meet with that co-conspirator and was ultimately paid $70,000 for his involvement, authorities said. Higginbotham would not answer questions as he left court Friday.

Authorities say Higginbotham was also part of an effort to try to have a foreign national, who had been critical of his home country and was in the U.S. on a visa, thrown out of America and sent back to his nation of origin. Prosecutors charge that Higginbotham met with the ambassador of that country — which wasn’t identified — and told them he was acting personally and not on behalf of the Justice Department, but that the U.S. government was working on expelling the person.

Source: https://www.justice-integrity.org/1588-today-s-bombshell-trump-probe-news-with-december-roundup